initial commit of ebook 8945HEADmain

13 files changed, 38184 insertions, 0 deletions

diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6833f05
--- /dev/null
+++ b/.gitattributes
@@ -0,0 +1,3 @@
+* text=auto
+*.txt text
+*.md text
diff --git a/8945-8.txt b/8945-8.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..dc1df32
--- /dev/null
+++ b/8945-8.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,11678 @@
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Life of Cicero, by Anthony Trollope
+
+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: Life of Cicero
+       Volume One
+
+Author: Anthony Trollope
+
+Release Date: August 28, 2003 [EBook #8945]
+Most recently updated: April 18, 2011
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LIFE OF CICERO ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Ted Garvin, Marc D'Hooghe, Steve Whitaker, and
+the PG Online Distributed Proofreading Team
+
+
+
+
+
+
+THE
+
+LIFE OF CICERO
+
+BY
+
+ANTHONY TROLLOPE
+
+_IN TWO VOLUMES_
+
+VOL. I.
+
+NEW YORK
+HARPER & BROTHERS, FRANKLIN SQUARE
+1881
+
+
+
+
+ CONTENTS OF VOLUME I.
+
+
+  CHAPTER I.
+                                         PAGE
+  INTRODUCTION.                             7
+
+
+  CHAPTER II.
+
+  HIS EDUCATION.                           40
+
+
+  CHAPTER III.
+
+  THE CONDITION OF ROME.                   62
+
+
+  CHAPTER IV.
+
+  HIS EARLY PLEADINGS.--SEXTUS ROSCIUS
+    AMERINUS.--HIS INCOME.                 80
+
+
+  CHAPTER V.
+
+  CICERO AS QUĘSTOR.                      107
+
+
+  CHAPTER VI.
+
+  VERRES.                                 124
+
+
+  CHAPTER VII.
+
+  CICERO AS ĘDILE AND PRĘTOR.             162
+
+
+  CHAPTER VIII.
+
+  CICERO AS CONSUL.                       184
+
+
+  CHAPTER IX.
+
+  CATILINE.                               206
+
+
+  CHAPTER X.
+
+  CICERO AFTER HIS CONSULSHIP.            240
+
+
+  CHAPTER XI.
+
+  THE TRIUMVIRATE.                        264
+
+
+  CHAPTER XII.
+
+  HIS EXILE.                              297
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+  APPENDICES.
+
+  APPENDIX A.                             335
+
+  APPENDIX B.                             340
+
+  APPENDIX C.                             242
+
+  APPENDIX D.                             345
+
+  APPENDIX E.                             347
+
+
+
+
+THE LIFE OF CICERO.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+_INTRODUCTION._
+
+
+I am conscious of a certain audacity in thus attempting to give a
+further life of Cicero which I feel I may probably fail in justifying by
+any new information; and on this account the enterprise, though it has
+been long considered, has been postponed, so that it may be left for
+those who come after me to burn or publish, as they may think proper;
+or, should it appear during my life, I may have become callous, through
+age, to criticism.
+
+The project of my work was anterior to the life by Mr. Forsyth, and was
+first suggested to me as I was reviewing the earlier volumes of Dean
+Merivale's History of the Romans under the Empire. In an article on the
+Dean's work, prepared for one of the magazines of the day, I inserted an
+apology for the character of Cicero, which was found to be too long as
+an episode, and was discarded by me, not without regret. From that time
+the subject has grown in my estimation till it has reached its present
+dimensions.
+
+I may say with truth that my book has sprung from love of the man, and
+from a heartfelt admiration of his virtues and his conduct, as well as
+of his gifts. I must acknowledge that in discussing his character with
+men of letters, as I have been prone to do, I have found none quite to
+agree with me. His intellect they have admitted, and his industry; but
+his patriotism they have doubted, his sincerity they have disputed, and
+his courage they have denied. It might have become me to have been
+silenced by their verdict; but I have rather been instigated to appeal
+to the public, and to ask them to agree with me against my friends. It
+is not only that Cicero has touched all matters of interest to men, and
+has given a new grace to all that he has touched; that as an orator, a
+rhetorician, an essayist, and a correspondent he was supreme; that as a
+statesman he was honest, as an advocate fearless, and as a governor
+pure; that he was a man whose intellectual part always dominated that of
+the body; that in taste he was excellent, in thought both correct and
+enterprising, and that in language he was perfect. All this has been
+already so said of him by other biographers. Plutarch, who is as
+familiar to us as though he had been English, and Middleton, who
+thoroughly loved his subject, and latterly Mr. Forsyth, who has
+struggled to be honest to him, might have sufficed as telling us so much
+as that. But there was a humanity in Cicero, a something almost of
+Christianity, a stepping forward out of the dead intellectualities of
+Roman life into moral perceptions, into natural affections, into
+domesticity, philanthropy, and conscious discharge of duty, which do not
+seem to have been as yet fully appreciated. To have loved his neighbor
+as himself before the teaching of Christ was much for a man to achieve;
+and that he did this is what I claim for Cicero, and hope to bring home
+to the minds of those who can find time for reading yet another added to
+the constantly increasing volumes about Roman times.
+
+It has been the habit of some latter writers, who have left to Cicero
+his literary honors, to rob him of those which had been accorded to him
+as a politician. Macaulay, expressing his surprise at the fecundity of
+Cicero, and then passing on to the praise of the Philippics as
+senatorial speeches, says of him that he seems to have been at the head
+of the "minds of the second order." We cannot judge of the
+classification without knowing how many of the great men of the world
+are to be included in the first rank. But Macaulay probably intended to
+express an opinion that Cicero was inferior because he himself had never
+dominated others as Marius had done, and Sylla, and Pompey, and Cęsar,
+and Augustus. But what if Cicero was ambitious for the good of others,
+while these men had desired power only for themselves?
+
+Dean Merivale says that Cicero was "discreet and decorous," as with a
+similar sneer another clergyman, Sydney Smith, ridiculed a Tory
+prime-minister because he was true to his wife. There is nothing so open
+to the bitterness of a little joke as those humble virtues by which no
+glitter can be gained, but only the happiness of many preserved. And the
+Dean declares that Cicero himself was not, except once or twice, and for
+a "moment only, a real power in the State." Men who usurped authority,
+such as those I have named, were the "real powers," and it was in
+opposition to such usurpation that Cicero was always urgent. Mr.
+Forsyth, who, as I have said, strives to be impartial, tells us that
+"the chief fault of Cicero's moral character was a want of sincerity."
+Absence of sincerity there was not. Deficiency of sincerity there was.
+Who among men has been free from such blame since history and the lives
+of men were first written? It will be my object to show that though less
+than godlike in that gift, by comparison with other men around him he
+was sincere, as he was also self-denying; which, if the two virtues be
+well examined, will indicate the same phase of character.
+
+But of all modern writers Mr. Froude has been the hardest to Cicero. His
+sketch of the life of Cęsar is one prolonged censure on that of Cicero.
+Our historian, with all that glory of language for which he is so
+remarkable, has covered the poor orator with obloquy. There is no period
+in Cicero's life so touching, I think, as that during which he was
+hesitating whether, in the service of the Republic, it did or did not
+behoove him to join Pompey before the battle of Pharsalia. At this time
+he wrote to his friend Atticus various letters full of agonizing doubts
+as to what was demanded from him by his duty to his country, by his
+friendship for Pompey, by loyalty to his party, and by his own dignity.
+As to a passage in one of those, Mr. Froude says "that Cicero had lately
+spoken of Cęsar's continuance in life as a disgrace to the State." "It
+has been seen also that he had long thought of assassination as the
+readiest means of ending it,"[1] says Mr. Froude. The "It has been seen"
+refers to a statement made a few pages earlier, in which he translates
+certain words written by Cicero to Atticus.[2] "He considered it a
+disgrace to them that Cęsar was alive." That is his translation; and in
+his indignation he puts other words, as it were, into the mouth of his
+literary brother of two thousand years before. "Why did not somebody
+kill him?" The Latin words themselves are added in a note, "Cum vivere
+ipsum turpe sit nobis."[3] Hot indignation has so carried the translator
+away that he has missed the very sense of Cicero's language. "When even
+to draw the breath of life at such a time is a disgrace to us!" That is
+what Cicero meant. Mr. Froude in a preceding passage gives us another
+passage from a letter to Atticus,[4] "Cęsar was mortal."[5] So much is
+an intended translation. Then Mr. Froude tells us how Cicero had "hailed
+Cęsar's eventual murder with rapture;" and goes on to say, "We read the
+words with sorrow and yet with pity." But Cicero had never dreamed of
+Cęsar's murder. The words of the passage are as follows: "Hunc primum
+mortalem esse, deinde etiam multis modis extingui posse cogitabam." "I
+bethought myself in the first place that this man was mortal, and then
+that there were a hundred ways in which he might be put on one side."
+All the latter authorities have, I believe, supposed the "hunc" or "this
+man" to be Pompey. I should say that this was proved by the gist of the
+whole letter--one of the most interesting that was ever written, as
+telling the workings of a great man's mind at a peculiar crisis of his
+life--did I not know that former learned editors have supposed Cęsar to
+have been meant. But whether Cęsar or Pompey, there is nothing in it to
+do with murder. It is a question--Cicero is saying to his friend--of the
+stability of the Republic. When a matter so great is considered, how is
+a man to trouble himself as to an individual who may die any day, or
+cease from any accident to be of weight? Cicero was speaking of the
+effect of this or that step on his own part. Am I, he says, for the sake
+of Pompey to bring down hordes of barbarians on my own country,
+sacrificing the Republic for the sake of a friend who is here to-day and
+may be gone to-morrow? Or for the sake of an enemy, if the reader thinks
+that the "hunc" refers to Cęsar. The argument is the same. Am I to
+consider an individual when the Republic is at stake? Mr. Froude tells
+us that he reads "the words with sorrow and yet with pity." So would
+every one, I think, sympathizing with the patriot's doubts as to his
+leader, as to his party, and as to his country. Mr. Froude does so
+because he gathers from them that Cicero is premeditating the murder of
+Cęsar!
+
+It is natural that a man should be judged out of his own mouth. A man
+who speaks much, and so speaks that his words shall be listened to and
+read, will be so judged. But it is not too much to demand that when a
+man's character is at stake his own words shall be thoroughly sifted
+before they are used against him.
+
+The writer of the biographical notice in the Encyclopedia Britannica on
+Cicero, sends down to posterity a statement that in the time of the
+first triumvirate, when our hero was withstanding the machinations of
+Cęsar and Pompey against the liberties of Rome, he was open to be
+bought. The augurship would have bought him. "So pitiful," says the
+biographer, "was the bribe to which he would have sacrificed his honor,
+his opinions, and the commonwealth!" With no more sententious language
+was the character of a great man ever offered up to public scorn. And on
+what evidence? We should have known nothing of the bribe and the
+corruption but for a few playful words in a letter from Cicero himself
+to Atticus. He is writing from one of his villas to his friend in Rome,
+and asks for the news of the day: Who are to be the new consuls? Who is
+to have the vacant augurship? Ah, says he, they might have caught even
+me with that bait;[6] as he said on another occasion that he was so much
+in debt as to be fit for a rebel; and again, as I shall have to explain
+just now, that he was like to be called in question under the Cincian
+law because of a present of books! This was just at the point of his
+life when he was declining all offers of public service--of public
+service for which his soul longed--because they were made to him by
+Cęsar. It was then that the "Vigintiviratus" was refused, which
+Quintilian mentions to his honor. It was then that he refused to be
+Cęsar's lieutenant. It was then that he might have been fourth with
+Cęsar, and Pompey, and Crassus, had he not felt himself bound not to
+serve against the Republic. And yet the biographer does not hesitate to
+load him with infamy because of a playful word in a letter half jocose
+and half pathetic to his friend. If a man's deeds be always honest,
+surely he should not be accused of dishonesty on the strength of some
+light word spoken in the confidence of familiar intercourse. The light
+words are taken to be grave because they meet the modern critic's eye
+clothed in the majesty of a dead language; and thus it comes to pass
+that their very meaning is misunderstood.
+
+My friend Mr. Collins speaks, in his charming little volume on Cicero,
+of "quiet evasions" of the Cincian law,[7] and tells us that we are
+taught by Cicero's letters not to trust Cicero's words when he was in a
+boasting vein. What has the one thing to do with the other? He names no
+quiet evasions. Mr. Collins makes a surmise, by which the character of
+Cicero for honesty is impugned--without evidence. The anonymous
+biographer altogether misinterprets Cicero. Mr. Froude charges Cicero
+with anticipation of murder, grounding his charge on words which he has
+not taken the trouble to understand. Cicero is accused on the strength
+of his own private letters. It is because we have not the private
+letters of other persons that they are not so accused. The courtesies of
+the world exact, I will not say demand, certain deviations from
+straightforward expression; and these are made most often in private
+conversations and in private correspondence. Cicero complies with the
+ways of the world; but his epistles are no longer private, and he is
+therefore subjected to charges of falsehood. It is because Cicero's
+letters, written altogether for privacy, have been found worthy to be
+made public that such accusations have been made. When the injustice of
+these critics strikes me, I almost wish that Cicero's letters had not
+been preserved.
+
+As I have referred to the evidence of those who have, in these latter
+days, spoken against Cicero, I will endeavor to place before the
+reader the testimony of his character which was given by writers,
+chiefly of his own nation, who dealt with his name for the hundred and
+fifty years after his death--from the time of Augustus down to that
+of Adrian--a period much given to literature, in which the name of a
+politician and a man of literature would assuredly be much discussed.
+Readers will see in what language he was spoken of by those who came
+after him. I trust they will believe that if I knew of testimony on
+the other side, of records adverse to the man, I would give them. The
+first passage to which I will allude does not bear Cicero's name; and
+it may be that I am wrong in assuming honor to Cicero from a passage
+in poetry, itself so famous, in which no direct allusion is made to
+himself. But the idea that Virgil in the following lines refers to the
+manner in which Cicero soothed the multitude who rose to destroy the
+theatre when the knights took their front seats in accordance with
+Otho's law, does not originate with me. I give the lines as translated
+by Dryden, with the original in a note.[8]
+
+   "As when in tumults rise the ignoble crowd,
+    Mad are their motions, and their tongues are loud;
+    And stones and brands in rattling volleys fly,
+    And all the rustic arms that fury can supply;
+    If then some grave and pious man appear,
+    They hush their noise, and lend a listening ear;
+    He soothes with sober words their angry mood,
+    And quenches their innate desire of blood."
+
+This, if it be not intended for a portrait of Cicero on that occasion,
+exactly describes his position and his success. We have a fragment of
+Cornelius Nepos, the biographer of the Augustan age, declaring that at
+Cicero's death men had to doubt whether literature or the Republic had
+lost the most.[9] Livy declared of him only, that he would be the best
+writer of Latin prose who was most like to Cicero.[10] Velleius
+Paterculus, who wrote in the time of Tiberius, speaks of Cicero's
+achievements with the highest honor. "At this period," he says, "lived
+Marcus Cicero, who owed everything to himself; a man of altogether a new
+family, as distinguished for ability as he was for the purity of his
+life."[11] Valerius Maximus quotes him as an example of a forgiving
+character.[12] Perhaps the warmest praise ever given to him came from
+the pen of Pliny the elder, from whose address to the memory of Cicero I
+will quote only a few words, as I shall refer to it more at length when
+speaking of his consulship. "Hail thou," says Pliny, "who first among
+men was called the father of your country."[13] Martial, in one of his
+distichs, tells the traveller that if he have but a book of Cicero's
+writing he may fancy that he is travelling with Cicero himself.[14]
+Lucan, in his bombastic verse, declares how Cicero dared to speak of
+peace in the camp of Pharsalia. The reader may think that Cicero should
+have said nothing of the kind, but Lucan mentions him with all
+honor.[15] Not Tacitus, as I think, but some author whose essay De
+Oratoribus was written about the time of Tacitus, and whose work has
+come to us with the name of Tacitus, has told us of Cicero that he was a
+master of logic, of ethics, and of physical science.[16] Everybody
+remembers the passage in Juvenal,
+
+                               "Sed Roma parentem
+    Roma patrem patrię Ciceronem libera dixit."
+
+"Rome, even when she was free, declared him to be the father of his
+country."[17] Even Plutarch, who generally seems to have a touch of
+jealousy when speaking of Cicero, declares that he verified the
+prediction of Plato, "That every State would be delivered from its
+calamities whenever power should fortunately unite with wisdom and
+justice in one person."[18] The praises of Quintilian as to the man are
+so mixed with the admiration of the critic for the hero of letters, that
+I would have omitted to mention them here were it not that they will
+help to declare what was the general opinion as to Cicero at the time in
+which it was written. He has been speaking of Demosthenes,[19] and then
+goes on: "Nor in regard to Cicero do I see that he ever failed in the
+duty of a good citizen. There is in evidence of this the splendor of his
+consulship, the rare integrity of his provincial administration, his
+refusal of office under Cęsar,[20] the firmness of his mind on the civil
+wars, giving way neither to hope nor fear, though these sorrows came
+heavily on him in his old age. On all these occasions he did the best he
+could for the Republic." Florus, who wrote after the twelve Cęsars, in
+the time of Trajan and of Adrian, whose rapid summary of Roman events
+can hardly be called a history, tells us, in a few words, how Catiline's
+conspiracy was crushed by the authority of Cicero and Cato in opposition
+to that of Cęsar.[21] Then, when he has passed in a few short chapters
+over all the intervening history of the Roman Empire, he relates, in
+pathetic words, the death of Cicero. "It was the custom in Rome to put
+up on the rostra the heads of those who had been slain; but now the city
+was not able to restrain its tears when the head of Cicero was seen
+there, upon the spot from which the citizens had so often listened to
+his words."[22] Such is the testimony given to this man by the writers
+who may be supposed to have known most of him as having been nearest to
+his time. They all wrote after him. Sallust, who was certainly his
+enemy, wrote of him in his lifetime, but never wrote in his dispraise.
+It is evident that public opinion forbade him to do so. Sallust is never
+warm in Cicero's praise, as were those subsequent authors whose words I
+have quoted, and has been made subject to reproach for envy, for having
+passed too lightly over Cicero's doings and words in his account of
+Catiline's conspiracy; but what he did say was to Cicero's credit. Men
+had heard of the danger, and therefore, says Sallust,[23] "They
+conceived the idea of intrusting the consulship to Cicero. For before
+that the nobles were envious, and thought that the consulship would be
+polluted if it were conferred on a _novus homo_, however distinguished.
+But when danger came, envy and pride had to give way." He afterward
+declares that Cicero made a speech against Catiline most brilliant, and
+at the same time useful to the Republic. This was lukewarm praise, but
+coming from Sallust, who would have censured if he could, it is as
+eloquent as any eulogy. There is extant a passage attributed to Sallust
+full of virulent abuse of Cicero, but no one now imagines that Sallust
+wrote it. It is called the Declamation of Sallust against Cicero, and
+bears intrinsic evidence that it was written in after years. It suited
+some one to forge pretended invectives between Sallust and Cicero, and
+is chiefly noteworthy here because it gives to Dio Cassius a foundation
+for the hardest of hard words he said against the orator.[24]
+
+Dio Cassius was a Greek who wrote in the reign of Alexander Severus,
+more than two centuries and a half after the death of Cicero, and he no
+doubt speaks evil enough of our hero. What was the special cause of
+jealousy on his part cannot probably be now known, but the nature of his
+hatred may be gathered from the passage in the note, which is so
+foul-mouthed that it can be only inserted under the veil of his own
+language.[25] Among other absurdities Dio Cassius says of Cicero that in
+his latter days he put away a gay young wife, forty years younger than
+himself, in order that he might enjoy without disturbance the company of
+another lady who was nearly as much older than himself as his wife was
+younger.
+
+Now I ask, having brought forward so strong a testimony, not, I will
+say, as to the character of the man, but of the estimation in which he
+was held by those who came shortly after him in his own country; having
+shown, as I profess that I have shown, that his name was always treated
+with singular dignity and respect, not only by the lovers of the old
+Republic but by the minions of the Empire; having found that no charge
+was ever made against him either for insincerity or cowardice or
+dishonesty by those who dealt commonly with his name, am I not justified
+in saying that they who have in later days accused him should have shown
+their authority? Their authority they have always found in his own
+words. It is on his own evidence against himself that they have
+depended--on his own evidence, or occasionally on their own surmises.
+When we are told of his cowardice, because those human vacillations of
+his, humane as well as human, have been laid bare to us as they came
+quivering out of his bosom on to his fingers! He is a coward to the
+critics because they have written without giving themselves time to feel
+the true meaning of his own words. If we had only known his acts and not
+his words--how he stood up against the judges at the trial of Verres,
+with what courage he encountered the responsibility of his doings at the
+time of Catiline, how he joined Pompey in Macedonia from a sense of
+sheer duty, how he defied Antony when to defy Antony was probable
+death--then we should not call him a coward! It is out of his own mouth
+that he is condemned. Then surely his words should be understood. Queen
+Christina says of him, in one of her maxims, that "Cicero was the only
+coward that was capable of great actions." The Queen of Sweden, whose
+sentences are never worth very much, has known her history well enough
+to have learned that Cicero's acts were noble, but has not understood
+the meaning of words sufficiently to extract from Cicero's own
+expressions their true bearing. The bravest of us all, if he is in high
+place, has to doubt much before he can know what true courage will
+demand of him; and these doubts the man of words will express, if there
+be given to him an _alter ego_ such as Cicero had in Atticus.
+
+In reference to the biography of Mr Forsyth I must, in justice both to
+him and to Cicero, quote one passage from the work: "Let those who, like
+De Quincey,[26] Mommsen, and others, speak disparagingly of Cicero, and
+are so lavish in praise of Cęsar, recollect that Cęsar never was
+troubled by a conscience." Here it is that we find that advance almost
+to Christianity of which I have spoken, and that superiority of mind
+being which makes Cicero the most fit to be loved of all the Romans.
+
+It is hard for a man, even in regard to his own private purposes, to
+analyze the meaning of a conscience, if he put out of question all
+belief in a future life. Why should a man do right if it be not for a
+reward here or hereafter? Why should anything be right--or wrong? The
+Stoics tried to get over the difficulty by declaring that if a man could
+conquer all his personal desires he would become, by doing so, happy,
+and would therefore have achieved the only end at which a man can
+rationally aim. The school had many scholars, but probably never a
+believer. The normal Greek or Roman might be deterred by the law, which
+means fear of punishment, or by the opinion of his neighbors, which
+means ignominy. He might recognize the fact that comfort would combine
+itself with innocence, or disease and want with lust and greed. In this
+there was little need of a conscience--hardly, perhaps, room for it. But
+when ambition came, with all the opportunities that chance, audacity,
+and intellect would give--as it did to Sylla, to Cęsar, and to
+Augustus--then there was nothing to restrain the men. There was to such
+a man no right but his power, no wrong but opposition to it. His cruelty
+or his clemency might be more or less, as his conviction of the utility
+of this or that other weapon for dominating men might be strong with
+him. Or there might be some variation in the flowing of the blood about
+his heart which might make a massacre of citizens a pleasing diversion
+or a painful process to him; but there was no conscience. With the man
+of whom we are about to speak conscience was strong. In his sometimes
+doubtful wanderings after political wisdom--in those mental mazes which
+have been called insincerity--we shall see him, if we look well into his
+doings, struggling to find whether, in searching for what was his duty,
+he should go to this side or to that. Might he best hope a return to
+that state of things which he thought good for his country by adhering
+to Cęsar or to Pompey? We see the workings of his conscience, and, as we
+remember that Scipio's dream of his, we feel sure that he had, in truth,
+within him a recognition of a future life.
+
+In discussing the character of a man, there is no course of error so
+fertile as the drawing of a hard and fast line. We are attracted by
+salient points, and, seeing them clearly, we jump to conclusions, as
+though there were a light-house on every point by which the nature of
+the coast would certainly be shown to us. And so it will, if we accept
+the light only for so much of the shore as it illumines. But to say that
+a man is insincere because he has vacillated in this or the other
+difficulty, that he is a coward because he has feared certain dangers,
+that he is dishonest because he has swerved, that he is a liar because
+an untrue word has been traced to him, is to suppose that you know all
+the coast because one jutting headland has been defined to you. He who
+so expresses himself on a man's character is either ignorant of human
+nature, or is in search of stones with which to pelt his enemy. "He has
+lied! He has lied!" How often in our own political contests do we hear
+the cry with a note of triumph! And if he have, how often has he told
+the truth? And if he have, how many are entitled by pure innocence in
+that matter to throw a stone at him? And if he have, do we not know how
+lies will come to the tongue of a man without thought of lying? In his
+stoutest efforts after the truth a man may so express himself that when
+afterward he is driven to compare his recent and his former words, he
+shall hardly be able to say even to himself that he has not lied. It is
+by the tenor of a man's whole life that we must judge him, whether he be
+a liar or no.
+
+To expect a man to be the same at sixty as he was at thirty, is to
+suppose that the sun at noon shall be graced with the colors which adorn
+its setting. And there are men whose intellects are set on so fine a
+pivot that a variation in the breeze of the moment, which coarser minds
+shall not feel, will carry them round with a rapidity which baffles the
+common eye. The man who saw his duty clearly on this side in the morning
+shall, before the evening come, recognize it on the other; and then
+again, and again, and yet again the vane shall go round. It may be that
+an instrument shall be too fine for our daily uses. We do not want a
+clock to strike the minutes, or a glass to tell the momentary changes in
+the atmosphere. It may be found that for the work of the world, the
+coarse work--and no work is so coarse, though none is so important, as
+that which falls commonly into the hands of statesmen--instruments
+strong in texture, and by reason of their rudeness not liable to sudden
+impressions, may be the best. That it is which we mean when we declare
+that a scrupulous man is impractical in politics. But the same man may,
+at various periods of his life, and on various days at the same period,
+be scrupulous and unscrupulous, impractical and practical, as the
+circumstances of the occasion may affect him. At one moment the rule of
+simple honesty will prevail with him. "Fiat justitia, ruat c[oe]lum."
+"Si fractus illabatur orbis Impavidum ferient ruinę." At another he will
+see the necessity of a compromise for the good of the many. He will tell
+himself that if the best cannot be done, he must content himself with
+the next best. He must shake hands with the imperfect, as the best way
+of lifting himself up from a bad way toward a better. In obedience to
+his very conscience he will temporize, and, finding no other way of
+achieving good, will do even evil that good may come of it. "Rem si
+possis recte; si non, quocunque modo rem." In judging of such a
+character as this, a hard and fast line will certainly lead us astray.
+In judging of Cicero, such a hard and fast line has too generally been
+used. He was a man singularly sensitive to all influences. It must be
+admitted that he was a vane, turning on a pivot finer than those on
+which statesmen have generally been made to work. He had none of the
+fixed purpose of Cęsar, or the unflinching principle of Cato. They were
+men cased in brass, whose feelings nothing could hurt. They suffered
+from none of those inward flutterings of the heart, doubtful
+aspirations, human longings, sharp sympathies, dreams of something
+better than this world, fears of something worse, which make Cicero so
+like a well-bred, polished gentleman of the present day. It is because
+he has so little like a Roman that he is of all the Romans the most
+attractive.
+
+Still there may be doubt whether, with all the intricacies of his
+character, his career was such as to justify a further biography at this
+distance of time. "What's Hecuba to him, or he to Hecuba?" asks Hamlet,
+when he finds himself stirred by the passion thrown into the bare
+recital of an old story by an itinerant player. What is Cicero to us of
+the nineteenth century that we should care so much for him as to read
+yet another book? Nevertheless, Hamlet was moved because the tale was
+well told. There is matter in the earnestness, the pleasantness, the
+patriotism, and the tragedy of the man's life to move a reader still--if
+the story could only be written of him as it is felt! The difficulty
+lies in that, and not in the nature of the story.
+
+The period of Cicero's life was the very turning-point of civilization
+and government in the history of the world. At that period of time the
+world, as we know it, was Rome. Greece had sunk. The Macedonian Empire
+had been destroyed. The kingdoms of the East--whether conquered, or even
+when conquering, as was Parthia for awhile--were barbaric, outside the
+circle of cultivation, and to be brought into it only by the arms and
+influence of Rome. During Cęsar's career Gaul was conquered; and
+Britain, with what was known of Germany, supposed to be partly
+conquered. The subjugation of Africa and Spain was all but completed.
+Letters, too, had been or were being introduced. Cicero's use of
+language was so perfect that it seems to us to have been almost
+necessarily the result of a long established art of Latin literature.
+But, in truth, he is the earliest of the prose writers of his country
+with whose works we are familiar. Excepting Varro, who was born but ten
+years before him, no earlier Latin prose writer has left more than a
+name to us; and the one work by which Varro is at all known, the De Re
+Rustica, was written after Cicero's death. Lucretius, whose language we
+regard as almost archaic, so unlike is it to that of Virgil or Horace,
+was born eight years after Cicero. In a great degree Cicero formed the
+Latin language--or produced that manipulation of it which has made it so
+graceful in prose, and so powerful a vehicle of thought. That which he
+took from any Latin writer he took from Terence.
+
+And it was then, just then, that there arose in Rome that unpremeditated
+change in its form of government which resulted in the self-assumed
+dictatorship of Cęsar, and the usurpation of the Empire by Augustus. The
+old Rome had had kings. Then the name and the power became odious--the
+name to all the citizens, no doubt, but the power simply to the
+nobility, who grudged the supremacy of one man. The kings were
+abolished, and an oligarchy was established under the name of a
+Republic, with its annual magistrates--at first its two Consuls, then
+its Prętors and others, and occasionally a Dictator, as some current
+event demanded a concentration of temporary power in a single hand for a
+certain purpose. The Republic was no republic, as we understand the
+word; nor did it ever become so, though their was always going on a
+perpetual struggle to transfer the power from the nobles to the people,
+in which something was always being given or pretended to be given to
+the outside class. But so little was as yet understood of liberty that,
+as each plebeian made his way up into high place and became one of the
+magistrates of the State, he became also one of the oligarchical
+faction. There was a continued contest, with a certain amount of good
+faith on each side, on behalf of the so-called Republic--but still a
+contest for power. This became so continued that a foreign war was at
+times regarded as a blessing, because it concentrated the energies of
+the State, which had been split and used by the two sections--by each
+against the other. It is probably the case that the invasion of the
+Gauls in earlier days, and, later on, the second Punic war, threatening
+as they were in their incidents to the power of Rome, provided the
+Republic with that vitality which kept it so long in existence. Then
+came Marius, dominant on one side as a tribune of the people, and Sylla,
+as aristocrat on the other, and the civil wars between them, in which,
+as one prevailed or the other, Rome was mastered. How Marius died, and
+Sylla reigned for three bloody, fatal years, is outside the scope of our
+purpose--except in this, that Cicero saw Sylla's proscriptions, and made
+his first essay into public life hot with anger at the Dictator's
+tyranny.
+
+It occurs to us as we read the history of Rome, beginning with the early
+Consuls and going to the death of Cęsar and of Cicero, and the
+accomplished despotism of Augustus, that the Republic could not have
+been saved by any efforts, and was in truth not worth the saving. We are
+apt to think, judging from our own idea of liberty, that there was so
+much of tyranny, so little of real freedom in the Roman form of
+government, that it was not good enough to deserve our sympathies. But
+it had been successful. It had made a great people, and had produced a
+wide-spread civilization. Roman citizenship was to those outside the one
+thing the most worthy to be obtained. That career which led the great
+Romans up from the state of Quęstor to the Ędile's, Prętor's, and
+Consul's chair, and thence to the rich reward of provincial government,
+was held to be the highest then open to the ambition of man. The Kings
+of Greece, and of the East, and of Africa were supposed to be inferior
+in their very rank to a Roman Proconsul, and this greatness was carried
+on with a semblance of liberty, and was compatible with a belief in the
+majesty of the Roman citizen. When Cicero began his work, Consuls,
+Prętors, Ędiles, and Quęstors were still chosen by the votes of the
+citizens. There was bribery, no doubt, and intimidation, and a resort to
+those dirty arts of canvassing with which we English have been so
+familiar; but in Cicero's time the male free inhabitants of Rome did
+generally carry the candidates to whom they attached themselves. The
+salt of their republican theory was not as yet altogether washed out
+from their practice.
+
+The love of absolute liberty as it has been cultivated among modern
+races did not exist in the time of Cicero. The idea never seems to have
+reached even his bosom, human and humanitarian as were his sympathies,
+that a man, as man, should be free. Half the inhabitants of Rome were
+slaves, and the institution was so grafted in the life of the time that
+it never occurred to a Roman that slaves, as a body, should be
+manumitted. The slaves themselves, though they were not, as have been
+the slaves whom we have seen, of a different color and presumed inferior
+race, do not themselves seem to have entertained any such idea. They
+were instigated now and again to servile wars, but there was no rising
+in quest of freedom generally. Nor was it repugnant to the Roman theory
+of liberty that the people whom they dominated, though not subjected to
+slavery, should still be outside the pale of civil freedom. That boon
+was to be reserved for the Roman citizen, and for him only. It had
+become common to admit to citizenship the inhabitants of other towns and
+further territories. The glory was kept not altogether for Rome, but for
+Romans.
+
+Thus, though the government was oligarchical, and the very essence of
+freedom ignored, there was a something which stood in the name of
+liberty, and could endear itself to a real patriot. With genuine
+patriotism Cicero loved his country, and beginning his public life as he
+did at the close of Sylla's tyranny, he was able to entertain a dream
+that the old state of things might be restored and the republican form
+of government maintained. There should still be two Consuls in Rome,
+whose annual election would guard the State against regal dominion. And
+there should, at the same time, be such a continuance of power in the
+hands of the better class--the "optimates," as he called them--as would
+preserve the city from democracy and revolution. No man ever trusted
+more entirely to popular opinion than Cicero, or was more anxious for
+aristocratic authority. But neither in one direction nor the other did
+he look for personal aggrandizement, beyond that which might come to him
+in accordance with the law and in subjection to the old form of
+government.
+
+It is because he was in truth patriotic, because his dreams of a
+Republic were noble dreams, because he was intent on doing good in
+public affairs, because he was anxious for the honor of Rome and of
+Romans, not because he was or was not a "real power in the State" that
+his memory is still worth recording. Added to this was the intellect and
+the wit and erudition of the man, which were at any rate supreme. And
+then, though we can now see that his efforts were doomed to failure by
+the nature of the circumstances surrounding him, he was so nearly
+successful, so often on the verge of success, that we are exalted by the
+romance of his story into the region of personal sympathy. As we are
+moved by the aspirations and sufferings of a hero in a tragedy, so are
+we stirred by the efforts, the fortune, and at last the fall of this
+man. There is a picturesqueness about the life of Cicero which is
+wanting in the stories of Marius or Sylla, of Pompey, or even of
+Cęsar--a picturesqueness which is produced in great part by these very
+doubtings which have been counted against him as insincerity.
+
+His hands were clean when the hands of all around him were defiled by
+greed. How infinitely Cicero must have risen above his time when he
+could have clean hands! A man in our days will keep himself clean from
+leprosy because to be a leper is to be despised by those around him.
+Advancing wisdom has taught us that such leprosy is bad, and public
+opinion coerces us. There is something too, we must suppose, in the
+lessons of Christianity. Or it may be that the man of our day, with all
+these advantages, does not keep himself clean--that so many go astray
+that public opinion shall almost seem to tremble in the balance. Even
+with us this and that abomination becomes allowable because so many do
+it. With the Romans, in the time of Cicero, greed, feeding itself on
+usury, rapine, and dishonesty, was so fully the recognized condition of
+life that its indulgence entailed no disgrace. But Cicero, with eyes
+within him which saw farther than the eyes of other men, perceived the
+baseness of the stain. It has been said also of him that he was not
+altogether free from reproach. It has been suggested that he accepted
+payment for his services as an advocate, any such payment being illegal.
+The accusation is founded on the knowledge that other advocates allowed
+themselves to be paid, and on the belief that Cicero could not have
+lived as he did without an income from that source. And then there is a
+story told of him that, though he did much at a certain period of his
+life to repress the usury, and to excite at the same time the enmity of
+a powerful friend, he might have done more. As we go on, the stories of
+these things will be told; but the very nature of the allegations
+against him prove how high he soared in honesty above the manners of his
+day. In discussing the character of the men, little is thought of the
+robberies of Sylla, the borrowings of Cęsar, the money-lending of
+Brutus, or the accumulated wealth of Crassus. To plunder a province, to
+drive usury to the verge of personal slavery, to accept bribes for
+perjured judgment, to take illegal fees for services supposed to be
+gratuitous, was so much the custom of the noble Romans that we hardly
+hate his dishonest greed when displayed in its ordinary course. But
+because Cicero's honesty was abnormal, we are first surprised, and then,
+suspecting little deviations, rise up in wrath against him, because in
+the midst of Roman profligacy he was not altogether a Puritan in his
+money matters.
+
+Cicero is known to us in three great capacities: as a statesman, an
+advocate, and a man of letters. As the combination of such pursuits is
+common in our own days, so also was it in his. Cęsar added them all to
+the great work of his life as a soldier. But it was given to Cicero to
+take a part in all those political struggles, from the resignation of
+Sylla to the first rising of the young Octavius, which were made on
+behalf of the Republic, and were ended by its downfall. His political
+life contains the story of the conversion of Rome from republican to
+imperial rule; and Rome was then the world. Could there have been no
+Augustus, no Nero, and then no Trajan, all Europe would have been
+different. Cicero's efforts were put forth to prevent the coming of an
+Augustus or a Nero, or the need of a Trajan; and as we read of them we
+feel that, had success been possible, he would have succeeded.
+
+As an advocate he was unsurpassed. From him came the feeling--whether it
+be right or wrong--that a lawyer, in pleading for his client, should
+give to that client's cause not only all his learning and all his wit,
+but also all his sympathy. To me it is marvellous, and interesting
+rather than beautiful, to see how completely Cicero can put off his own
+identity and assume another's in any cause, whatever it be, of which he
+has taken the charge. It must, however, be borne in mind that in old
+Rome the distinction between speeches made in political and in civil or
+criminal cases was not equally well marked as with us, and also that the
+reader having the speeches which have come down to us, whether of one
+nature or the other, presented to him in the same volume, is apt to
+confuse the public and that which may, perhaps, be called the private
+work of the man. In the speeches best known to us Cicero was working as
+a public man for public objects, and the ardor, I may say the fury, of
+his energy in the cause which he was advocating was due to his public
+aspirations. The orations which have come to us in three sets, some of
+them published only but never spoken--those against Verres, against
+Catiline, and the Philippics against Antony--were all of this nature,
+though the first concerned the conduct of a criminal charge against one
+individual. Of these I will speak in their turn; but I mention them here
+in order that I may, if possible, induce the reader to begin his inquiry
+into Cicero's character as an advocate with a just conception of the
+objects of the man. He wished, no doubt, to shine, as does the barrister
+of to-day: he wished to rise; he wished, if you will, to make his
+fortune, not by the taking of fees, but by extending himself into higher
+influence by the authority of his name. No doubt he undertook this and
+the other case without reference to the truth or honesty of the cause,
+and, when he did so, used all his energy for the bad, as he did for the
+good cause. There seems to be special accusation made against him on this
+head, as though, the very fact that he undertook his work without pay
+threw upon him the additional obligation of undertaking no cause that
+was not in itself upright. With us the advocate does this notoriously
+for his fee. Cicero did it as notoriously in furtherance of some
+political object of the moment, or in maintenance of a friendship which
+was politically important. I say nothing against the modern practice.
+This would not be the place for such an argument. Nor do I say that, by
+rules of absolute right and wrong, Cicero was right; but he was as
+right, at any rate, as the modern barrister. And in reaching the
+high-minded conditions under which he worked, he had only the light of
+his own genius to guide him. When compare the clothing of the savage
+race with our own, their beads and woad and straw and fibres with our
+own petticoats and pantaloons, we acknowledge the progress of
+civilization and the growth of machinery. It is not a wonderful thing to
+us that an African prince should not be as perfectly dressed as a young
+man in Piccadilly. But, when we make a comparison of morals between our
+own time and a period before Christ, we seem to forget that more should
+be expected from us than from those who lived two thousand years ago.
+
+There are some of those pleadings, speeches made by Cicero on behalf of
+or against an accused party, from which we may learn more of Roman life
+than from any other source left to us. Much we may gather from Terence,
+much from Horace, something from Juvenal. There is hardly, indeed, a
+Latin author from which an attentive reader may not pick up some detail
+of Roman customs. Cicero's letters are themselves very prolific. But the
+pretty things of the poets are not quite facts, nor are the bitter
+things of the satirist; and though a man's letters to his friend may be
+true, such letters as come to us will have been the products of the
+greater minds, and will have come from a small and special class. I fear
+that the Newgate Calendar of the day would tell us more of the ways of
+living then prevailing than the letters of Lady Mary W. Montagu or of
+Horace Walpole. From the orations against Verres we learn how the people
+of a province lived under the tyranny inflicted upon them; and from
+those spoken in defence of Sextus Amerinus and Aulus Cluentius, we
+gather something of the horrors of Roman life--not in Rome, indeed, but
+within the limits of Roman citizenship.
+
+It is, however, as a man of letters that Cicero will be held in the
+highest esteem. It has been his good-fortune to have a great part of
+what he wrote preserved for future ages. His works have not perished, as
+have those of his contemporaries, Varro and Hortensius. But this has
+been due to two causes, which were independent of Fortune. He himself
+believed in their value, and took measures for their protection; and
+those who lived in his own time, and in the immediately succeeding ages,
+entertained the same belief and took the same care. Livy said that, to
+write Latin well, the writer should write it like Cicero; and
+Quintilian, the first of Latin critics, repeated to us what Livy had
+asserted.[27] There is a sweetness of language about Cicero which runs
+into the very sound; so that passages read aright would, by their very
+cadences, charm the ear of listeners ignorant of the language. Eulogy
+never was so happy as his. Eulogy, however, is tasteless in comparison
+with invective. Cicero's abuse is awful. Let the reader curious in such
+matters turn to the diatribes against Vatinius, one of Cęsar's
+creatures, and to that against the unfortunate Proconsul Piso; or to his
+attacks on Gabinius, who was Consul together with Piso in the year of
+Cicero's banishment. There are wonderful morsels in the philippics
+dealing with Antony's private character; but the words which he uses
+against Gabinius and Piso beat all that I know elsewhere in the science
+of invective. Junius could not approach him; and even Macaulay, though
+he has, in certain passages, been very bitter, has not allowed himself
+the latitude which Roman taste and Roman manners permitted to Cicero.
+
+It may, however, be said that the need of biographical memoirs as to a
+man of letters is by no means in proportion to the excellence of the
+work that he has achieved. Alexander is known but little to us, because
+we know so little of the details of his life. Cęsar is much to us,
+because we have in truth been made acquainted with him. But Shakspeare,
+of whose absolute doings we know almost nothing, would not be nearer or
+dearer had he even had a Boswell to paint his daily portrait. The man of
+letters is, in truth, ever writing his own biography. What there is in
+his mind is being declared to the world at large by himself; and if he
+can so write that the world at large shall care to read what is written,
+no other memoir will, perhaps, be necessary. For myself I have never
+regretted those details of Shakspeare's life which a Boswell of the time
+might have given us. But Cicero's personality as a man of letters seems
+especially to require elucidation. His letters lose their chief charm if
+the character of the man be not known, and the incidents of his life.
+His essays on rhetoric--the written lessons which he has left on the art
+of oratory--are a running commentary on his own career as an orator.
+Most of his speeches require for their understanding a knowledge of the
+circumstances of his life. The treatises which we know as his
+Philosophy--works which have been most wrongly represented by being
+grouped under that name--can only be read with advantage by the light of
+his own experience. There are two separate classes of his so-called
+Philosophy, in describing which the word philosophy, if it be used at
+all, must be made to bear two different senses. He handles in one set of
+treatises, not, I think, with his happiest efforts, the teaching of the
+old Greek schools. Such are the Tusculan Disquisitions, the Academics,
+and the De Finibus. From reading these, without reference to the
+idiosyncrasies of the writer, the student would be led to believe that
+Cicero himself was a philosopher after that sort. But he was, in truth,
+the last of men to lend his ears
+
+    "To those budge doctors of the stoic fur."
+
+Cicero was a man thoroughly human in all his strength and all his
+weakness. To sit apart from the world and be happy amid scorn, poverty,
+and obscurity, with a mess of cabbage and a crust, absolutely contented
+with abstract virtue, has probably been given to no man; but of none has
+it been less within the reach than of Cicero. To him ginger was always
+hot in the mouth, whether it was the spice of politics, or of social
+delight, or of intellectual enterprise. When in his deep sorrow at the
+death of his daughter, when for a time the Republic was dead to him, and
+public and private life were equally black, he craved employment. Then
+he took down his Greek manuscripts and amused himself as best he might
+by writing this way or that. It was a matter on which his intellect
+could work and his energies be employed, though the theory of his life
+was in no way concerned in it. Such was one class of his Philosophy. The
+other consisted of a code of morals which he created for himself by his
+own convictions, formed on the world around him, and which displayed
+itself in essays, such as those De Officiis--on the duties of life; De
+Senectute, De Amicitia--on old age and friendship, and the like, which
+were not only intended for use, but are of use to any man or woman who
+will study them up to this day. There are others, treatises on law and
+on government and religion, which have all been lumped together, for the
+misguidance of school-boys, under the name of Cicero's Philosophy. But
+they, be they of one class or the other, require an understanding of the
+man's character before they can be enjoyed.
+
+For these reasons I think that there are incidents in the life, the
+character, and the work of Cicero which ought to make his biography
+interesting. His story is fraught with energy, with success, with
+pathos, and with tragedy. And then it is the story of a man human as men
+are now. No child of Rome ever better loved his country, but no child of
+Rome was ever so little like a Roman. Arms and battles were to him
+abominable, as they are to us. But arms and battles were the delight of
+Romans. He was ridiculed in his own time, and has been ridiculed ever
+since, for the alliterating twang of the line in which he declared his
+feeling:
+
+    "Cedant arma togę; concedat laurea linguę."
+
+But the thing said was thoroughly good, and the better because the
+opinion was addressed to men among whom the glory of arms was still in
+ascendant over the achievements of intellectual enterprise. The greatest
+men have been those who have stepped out from the mass, and gone beyond
+their time--seeing things, with eyesight almost divine, which have
+hitherto been hidden from the crowd. Such was Columbus when he made his
+way across the Western Ocean; such were Galileo and Bacon; such was
+Pythagoras, if the ideas we have of him be at all true. Such also was
+Cicero. It is not given to the age in which such men live to know them.
+Could their age even recognize them, they would not overstep their age
+as they do. Looking back at him now, we can see how like a Christian was
+the man--so like, that in essentials we can hardly see the difference.
+He could love another as himself--as nearly as a man may do; and he
+taught such love as a doctrine.[28] He believed in the existence of one
+supreme God.[29] He believed that man would rise again and live forever
+in some heaven.[30] I am conscious that I cannot much promote this view
+of Cicero's character by quoting isolated passages from his works--words
+which taken alone may be interpreted in one sense or another, and which
+should be read, each with its context, before their due meaning can be
+understood. But I may perhaps succeed in explaining to a reader what it
+is that I hope to do in the following pages, and why it is that I
+undertake a work which must be laborious, and for which many will think
+that there is no remaining need.
+
+I would not have it thought that, because I have so spoken of Cicero's
+aspirations and convictions, I intend to put him forth as a faultless
+personage in history. He was much too human to be perfect. Those who
+love the cold attitude of indifference may sing of Cato as perfect.
+Cicero was ambitious, and often unscrupulous in his ambition. He was a
+loving husband and a loving father; but at the end of his life he could
+quarrel with his old wife irrecoverably, and could idolize his daughter,
+while he ruined his son by indulgence. He was very great while he spoke
+of his country, which he did so often; but he was almost as little when
+he spoke of himself--which he did as often. In money-matters he was
+honest--for the times in which he lived, wonderfully honest; but in
+words he was not always equally trustworthy. He could flatter where he
+did not love. I admit that it was so, though I will not admit without a
+protest that the word insincere should be applied to him as describing
+his character generally. He was so much more sincere than others that
+the protest is needed. If a man stand but five feet eleven inches in his
+shoes, shall he be called a pygmy? And yet to declare that he measures
+full six feet would be untrue.
+
+Cicero was a busybody. Were there anything to do, he wished to do it,
+let it be what it might. "Cedant arma togę." If anything was written on
+his heart, it was that. Yet he loved the idea of leading an army, and
+panted for a military triumph. Letters and literary life were dear to
+him, and yet he liked to think that he could live on equal terms with
+the young bloods of Rome, such as C[oe]lius. As far as I can judge, he
+cared nothing for luxurious eating and drinking, and yet he wished to be
+reckoned among the gormands and gourmets of his times. He was so little
+like the "budge doctors of the stoic fur," of whom it was his delight to
+write when he had nothing else to do, that he could not bear any touch
+of adversity with equanimity. The stoic requires to be hardened against
+"the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune." It is his profession to
+be indifferent to the "whips and scorns of time." No man was less
+hardened, or more subject to suffering from scorns and whips. There be
+those who think proneness to such suffering is unmanly, or that the
+sufferer should at any rate hide his agony. Cicero did not. Whether of
+his glory or of his shame, whether of his joy or of his sorrow, whether
+of his love or of his hatred, whether of his hopes or of his despair, he
+spoke openly, as he did of all things. It has not been the way of
+heroes, as we read of them; but it is the way with men as we live with
+them.
+
+What a man he would have been for London life! How he would have enjoyed
+his club, picking up the news of the day from all lips, while he seemed
+to give it to all ears! How popular he would have been at the Carlton,
+and how men would have listened to him while every great or little
+crisis was discussed! How supreme he would have sat on the Treasury
+bench, or how unanswerable, how fatal, how joyous, when attacking the
+Government from the opposite seats! How crowded would have been his rack
+with invitations to dinner! How delighted would have been the
+middle-aged countesses of the time to hold with him mild intellectual
+flirtations--and the girls of the period, how proud to get his
+autograph, how much prouder to have touched the lips of the great orator
+with theirs! How the pages of the magazines would have run over with
+little essays from his pen! "Have you seen our Cicero's paper on
+agriculture? That lucky fellow, Editor ----, got him to do it last month!"
+"Of course you have read Cicero's article on the soul. The bishops don't
+know which way to turn." "So the political article in the _Quarterly_ is
+Cicero's?" "Of course you know the art-criticism in the _Times_ this
+year is Tully's doing?" But that would probably be a bounce. And then
+what letters he would write! With the penny-post instead of travelling
+messengers at his command, and pen instead of wax and sticks, or perhaps
+with an instrument-writer and a private secretary, he would have
+answered all questions and solved all difficulties. He would have so
+abounded with intellectual fertility that men would not have known
+whether most to admire his powers of expression or to deprecate his want
+of reticence.
+
+There will necessarily be much to be said of Cicero's writings in the
+following pages, as it is my object to delineate the literary man as
+well as the politician. In doing this, there arises a difficulty as to
+the sequence in which his works should be taken. It will hardly suit the
+purpose in view to speak of them all either chronologically or
+separately as to their subjects. The speeches and the letters clearly
+require the former treatment as applying each to the very moment of time
+at which they were either spoken or written. His treatises, whether on
+rhetoric or on the Greek philosophy, or on government, or on morals, can
+best be taken apart as belonging in a very small degree, if at all, to
+the period in which they were written. I will therefore endeavor to
+introduce the orations and letters as the periods may suit, and to treat
+of his essays afterward by themselves.
+
+A few words I must say as to the Roman names I have used in my
+narrative. There is a difficulty in this respect, because the practice
+of my boyhood has partially changed itself. Pompey used to be Pompey
+without a blush. Now with an erudite English writer he is generally
+Pompeius. The denizens of Africa--the "nigger" world--have had, I think,
+something to do with this. But with no erudite English writer is Terence
+Terentius, or Virgil Virgilius, or Horace Horatius. Were I to speak of
+Livius, the erudite English listener would think that I alluded to an
+old author long prior to our dear historian. And though we now talk of
+Sulla instead of Sylla, we hardly venture on Antonius instead of Antony.
+Considering all this, I have thought it better to cling to the sounds
+which have ever been familiar to myself; and as I talk of Virgil and of
+Horace and Ovid freely and without fear, so shall I speak also of Pompey
+and of Antony and of Catiline. In regard to Sulla, the change has been
+so complete that I must allow the old name to have re-established itself
+altogether.
+
+It has been customary to notify the division of years in the period of
+which I am about to write by dating from two different eras, counting
+down from the building of Rome, A.U.C., or "anno urbis conditę," and
+back from the birth of Christ, which we English mark by the letters
+B.C., before Christ. In dealing with Cicero, writers (both French and
+English) have not uncommonly added a third mode of dating, assigning his
+doings or sayings to the year of his age. There is again a fourth mode,
+common among the Romans, of indicating the special years by naming the
+Consuls, or one of them. "O nata mecum consule Manlio," Horace says,
+when addressing his cask of wine. That was, indeed, the official mode of
+indicating a date, and may probably be taken as showing how strong the
+impression in the Roman mind was of the succession of their Consuls. In
+the following pages I will use generally the date B.C., which, though
+perhaps less simple than the A.U.C., gives to the mind of the modern
+reader a clearer idea of the juxtaposition of events. The reader will
+surely know that Christ was born in the reign of Augustus, and crucified
+in that of Tiberius; but he will not perhaps know, without the trouble
+of some calculation, how far removed from the period of Christ was the
+year 648 A.U.C., in which Cicero was born. To this I will add on the
+margin the year of Cicero's life. He was nearly sixty-four when he died.
+I shall, therefore, call that year his sixty-third year.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+_HIS EDUCATION._
+
+
+At Arpinum, on the river Liris, a little stream which has been made to
+sound sweetly in our ears by Horace,[31] in a villa residence near the
+town, Marcus Tullius Cicero was born, 106 years before Christ, on the 3d
+of January, according to the calendar then in use. Pompey the Great was
+born in the same year. Arpinum was a State which had been admitted into
+Roman citizenship, lying between Rome and Capua, just within that
+portion of Italy which was till the other day called the Kingdom of
+Naples. The district from which he came is noted, also, as having given
+birth to Marius. Cicero was of an equestrian family, which means as much
+as though we were to say among ourselves that a man had been born a
+gentleman and nothing more. An "eques" or knight in Cicero's time became
+so, or might become so, by being in possession of a certain income. The
+title conferred no nobility. The plebeian, it will be understood, could
+not become patrician, though he might become noble--as Cicero did. The
+patrician must have been born so--must have sprung from the purple of
+certain fixed families.[32] Cicero was born a plebeian, of equestrian
+rank and became ennobled when he was ranked among the senators because
+of his service among the high magistrates of the Republic. As none of
+his family had served before him, he was "novus homo," a new man, and
+therefore not noble till he had achieved nobility himself. A man was
+noble who could reckon a Consul, a Prętor, or an Ędile among his
+ancestors. Such was not the case with Cicero. As he filled all these
+offices, his son was noble--as were his son's sons and grandsons, if
+such there were.
+
+It was common to Romans to have three names, and our Cicero had three.
+Marcus, which was similar in its use to the Christian name of one of us,
+had been that of his grandfather and father, and was handed on to his
+son. This, called the pręnomen, was conferred on the child when a babe
+with a ceremony not unlike that of our baptism. There was but a limited
+choice of such names among the Romans, so that an initial letter will
+generally declare to those accustomed to the literature that intended.
+A. stands for Aulus, P. for Publius, M. generally for Marcus, C. for
+Caius, though there was a Cneus also. The nomen, Tullius, was that of
+the family. Of this family of Tullius to which Cicero belonged we know
+no details. Plutarch tells us that of his father nothing was said but in
+extremes, some declaring that he had been a fuller, and others that he
+had been descended from a prince who had governed the Volsci. We do not
+see why he may not have sprung from the prince, and also have been a
+fuller. There can, however, be no doubt that he was a gentleman, not
+uneducated himself, with means and the desire to give his children the
+best education which Rome or Greece afforded. The third name or
+cognomen, that of Cicero, belonged to a branch of the family of Tullius.
+This third name had generally its origin, as do so many of our surnames,
+in some specialty of place, or trade, or chance circumstance. It was
+said that an ancestor had been called Cicero from "cicer," a vetch,
+because his nose was marked with the figure of that vegetable. It is
+more probable that the family prospered by the growing and sale of
+vetches. Be that as it may, the name had been well established before
+the orator's time. Cicero's mother was one Helvia, of whom we are told
+that she was well-born and rich. Cicero himself never alludes to her--as
+neither, if I remember rightly, did Horace to his mother, though he
+speaks so frequently of his father. Helvia's younger son, Quintus, tells
+a story of his mother in a letter, which has been, by chance, preserved
+among those written by our Cicero. She was in the habit of sealing up
+the empty wine-jars, as well as those which were full, so that a jar
+emptied on the sly by a guzzling slave might be at once known. This is
+told in a letter to Tiro, a favorite slave belonging to Marcus, of whom
+we shall hear often in the course of our work. As the old lady sealed up
+the jars, though they contained no wine, so must Tiro write letters,
+though he has nothing to say in them. This kind of argument, taken from
+the old familiar stories of one's childhood and one's parents, could be
+only used to a dear and familiar friend. Such was Tiro, though still a
+slave, to the two brothers. Roman life admitted of such friendships,
+though the slave was so completely the creature of the master that his
+life and death were at the master's disposal. This is nearly all that is
+known of Cicero's father and mother, or of his old home.
+
+There is, however, sufficient evidence that the father paid great
+attention to the education of his sons--if, in the case of Marcus, any
+evidence were wanting where the result is so manifest by the work of his
+life. At a very early age, probably when he was eight--in the year which
+produced Julius Cęsar--he was sent to Rome, and there was devoted to
+studies which from the first were intended to fit him for public life.
+Middleton says that the father lived in Rome with his son, and argues
+from this that he was a man of large means. But Cicero gives no
+authority for this. It is more probable that he lived at the house of
+one Aculeo, who had married his mother's sister, and had sons with whom
+Cicero was educated. Stories are told of his precocious talents and
+performances such as we are accustomed to hear of many remarkable
+men--not unfrequently from their own mouths. It is said of him that he
+was intimate with the two great advocates of the time, Lucius Crassus
+and Marcus Antonius the orator, the grandfather of Cicero's future
+enemy, whom we know as Marc Antony. Cicero speaks of them both as though
+he had seen them and talked much of them in his youth. He tells us
+anecdotes of them;[33] how they were both accustomed to conceal their
+knowledge of Greek, fancying that the people in whose eyes they were
+anxious to shine would think more of them if they seemed to have
+contented themselves simply with Roman words and Roman thoughts. But the
+intimacy was probably that which a lad now is apt to feel that he has
+enjoyed with a great man, if he has seen and heard him, and perhaps been
+taken by the hand. He himself gives in very plain language an account of
+his own studies when he was seventeen, eighteen, and nineteen. He speaks
+of the orators of that day[34]: "When I was above all things anxious to
+listen to these men, the banishment of Cotta was a great sorrow to me. I
+was passionately intent on hearing those who were left, daily writing,
+reading, and making notes. Nor was I content only with practice in the
+art of speaking. In the following year Varius had to go, condemned by
+his own enactment; and at this time, in working at the civil law, I gave
+much of my time to Quintus Scęvola, the son of Publius, who, though he
+took no pupils, by explaining points to those who consulted him, gave
+great assistance to students. The year after, when Sulla and Pompey were
+Consuls, I learned what oratory really means by listening to Publius
+Sulpicius, who as tribune was daily making harangues. It was then that
+Philo, the Chief of the Academy, with other leading philosophers of
+Athens, had been put to flight by the war with Mithridates, and had come
+to Rome. To him I devoted myself entirely, stirred up by a wonderful
+appetite for acquiring the Greek philosophy. But in that, though the
+variety of the pursuit and its greatness charmed me altogether, yet it
+seemed to me that the very essence of judicial conclusion was altogether
+suppressed. In that year Sulpicius perished, and in the next, three of
+our greatest orators, Quintus Catulus, Marcus Antonius, and Caius
+Julius, were cruelly killed." This was the time of the civil war between
+Marius and Sulla. "In the same year I took lessons from Molo the
+Rhodian, a great pleader and master of the art." In the next chapter he
+tells us that he passed his time also with Diodatus the Stoic, who
+afterward lived with him, and died in his house. Here we have an
+authentic description of the manner in which Cicero passed his time as a
+youth at Rome, and one we can reduce probably to absolute truth by
+lessening the superlatives. Nothing in it, however, is more remarkable
+than the confession that, while his young intellect rejoiced in the
+subtle argumentation of the Greek philosophers, his clear common sense
+quarrelled with their inability to reach any positive conclusion.
+
+But before these days of real study had come upon him he had given
+himself up to juvenile poetry. He is said to have written a poem called
+Pontius Glaucus when he was fourteen years old. This was no doubt a
+translation from the Greek, as were most of the poems that he wrote, and
+many portions of his prose treatises.[35] Plutarch tells us that the
+poem was extant in his time, and declares that, "in process of time,
+when he had studied this art with greater application, he was looked
+upon as the best poet, as well as the greatest orator in Rome." The
+English translators of Plutarch tell us that their author was an
+indifferent judge of Latin poetry, and allege as proof of this that he
+praised Cicero as a poet, a praise which he gave "contrary to the
+opinion of Juvenal." But Juvenal has given no opinion of Cicero's
+poetry, having simply quoted one unfortunate line noted for its egotism,
+and declared that Cicero would never have had his head cut off had his
+philippics been of the same nature.[36] The evidence of Quintus Mucius
+Scęvola as to Cicero's poetry was perhaps better, as he had the means,
+at any rate, of reading it. He believed that the Marius, a poem written
+by Cicero in praise of his great fellow-townsman, would live to
+posterity forever. The story of the old man's prophecy comes to us, no
+doubt, from Cicero himself, and is put into the mouth of his
+brother;[37] but had it been untrue it would have been contradicted.
+
+The Glaucus was a translation from the Greek done by a boy, probably as
+a boy's lesson It is not uncommon that such exercises should be
+treasured by parents, or perhaps by the performer himself, and not
+impossible that they should be made to reappear afterward as original
+compositions. Lord Brougham tells us in his autobiography that in his
+early youth he tried his hand at writing English essays, and even tales
+of fiction.[38] "I find one of these," he says, "has survived the
+waste-paper basket, and it may amuse my readers to see the sort of
+composition I was guilty of at the age of thirteen. My tale was entitled
+'Memnon, or Human Wisdom,' and is as follows." Then we have a fair
+translation of Voltaire's romance, "Memnon," or "La Sagesse Humaine."
+The old lord, when he was collecting his papers for his autobiography,
+had altogether forgotten his Voltaire, and thought that he had composed
+the story! Nothing so absurd as that is told of Cicero by himself or on
+his behalf.
+
+It may be as well to say here what there may be to be said as to
+Cicero's poetry generally. But little of it remains to us, and by that
+little it has been admitted that he has not achieved the name of a great
+poet; but what he did was too great in extent and too good in its nature
+to be passed over altogether without notice. It has been his fate to be
+rather ridiculed than read as a maker of verses, and that ridicule has
+come from two lines which I have already quoted. The longest piece which
+we have is from the Phęnomena of Aratus, which he translated from the
+Greek when he was eighteen years old, and which describes the heavenly
+bodies. It is known to us best by the extracts from it given by the
+author himself in his treatise, De Naturā Deorum. It must be owned that
+it is not pleasant reading. But translated poetry seldom is pleasant,
+and could hardly be made so on such a subject by a boy of eighteen. The
+Marius was written two years after this, and we have a passage from it,
+quoted by the author in his De Divinatione, containing some fine lines.
+It tells the story of the battle of the eagle and the serpent. Cicero
+took it, no doubt (not translated it, however), from the passage in the
+Iliad, lib, xii, 200, which has been rendered by Pope with less than his
+usual fire, and by Lord Derby with no peculiar charm. Virgil has
+reproduced the picture with his own peculiar grace of words. His version
+has been translated by Dryden, but better, perhaps, by Christopher Pitt.
+Voltaire has translated Cicero's lines with great power, and Shelley has
+reproduced the same idea at much greater length in the first canto of
+the Revolt of Islam, taking it probably from Cicero, but, if not, from
+Voltaire.[39] I venture to think that, of the nine versions, Cicero's is
+the best, and that it is the most melodious piece of Latin poetry we
+have up to that date. Twenty-seven years afterward, when Lucretius was
+probably at work on his great poem, Cicero wrote an account of his
+consulship in verse. Of this we have fifty or sixty lines, in which the
+author describes the heavenly warnings which were given as to the
+affairs of his own consular year. The story is not a happy one, but the
+lines are harmonious. It is often worth our while to inquire how poetry
+has become such as it is, and how the altered and improved phases of
+versification have arisen. To trace our melody from Chaucer to Tennyson
+is matter of interest to us all. Of Cicero as a poet we may say that he
+found Latin versification rough, and left it smooth and musical. Now, as
+we go on with the orator's life and prose works, we need not return to
+his poetry.
+
+The names of many masters have been given to us as those under whom
+Cicero's education was carried on. Among others he is supposed, at a
+very early age, to have been confided to Archias. Archias was a Greek,
+born at Antioch, who devoted himself to letters, and, if we are to
+believe what Cicero says, when speaking as an advocate, excelled all his
+rivals of the day. Like many other educated Greeks, he made his way to
+Rome, and was received as one of the household of Lucullus, with whom he
+travelled, accompanying him even to the wars. He became a citizen of
+Rome--so Cicero assures us--and Cicero's tutor. What Cicero owed to him
+we do not know, but to Cicero Archias owed immortality. His claim to
+citizenship was disputed; and Cicero, pleading on his behalf, made one
+of those shorter speeches which are perfect in melody, in taste, and in
+language. There is a passage in which speaking on behalf of so excellent
+a professor in the art, he sings the praises of literature generally. I
+know no words written in praise of books more persuasive or more
+valuable. "Other recreations," he says, "do not belong to all seasons
+nor to all ages, nor to all places. These pursuits nourish our youth and
+delight our old age. They adorn our prosperity and give a refuge and a
+solace to our troubles. They charm us at home, and they are not in our
+way when we are abroad. They go to bed with us. They travel about with
+us. They accompany us as we escape into the country."[40] Archias
+probably did something for him in directing his taste, and has been
+rewarded thus richly. As to other lessons, we know that he was
+instructed in law by Scęvola, and he has told us that he listened to
+Crassus and Antony. At sixteen he went through the ceremony of putting
+off his boy's dress, the toga prętexta, and appearing in the toga
+virilis before the Prętor, thus assuming his right to go about a man's
+business. At sixteen the work of education was _not_ finished--no more
+than it is with us when a lad at Oxford becomes "of age" at twenty-one;
+nor was he put beyond his father's power, the "patria potestas," from
+which no age availed to liberate a son; but, nevertheless, it was a very
+joyful ceremony, and was duly performed by Cicero in the midst of his
+studies with Scęvola.
+
+At eighteen he joined the army. That doctrine of the division of labor
+which now, with us, runs through and dominates all pursuits, had not as
+yet been made plain to the minds of men at Rome by the political
+economists of the day. It was well that a man should know something of
+many things--that he should especially, if he intended to be a leader of
+men, be both soldier and orator. To rise to be Consul, having first been
+Quęstor, Ędile, and Prętor, was the path of glory. It had been the
+special duty of the Consuls of Rome, since the establishment of consular
+government, to lead the armies of the Republic. A portion of the duty
+devolved upon the Prętors, as wars became more numerous; and latterly
+the commanders were attended by Quęstors. The Governors of the
+provinces, Proconsuls, or Proprętors with proconsular authority, always
+combined military with civil authority. The art of war was, therefore, a
+necessary part of the education of a man intended to rise in the service
+of the State. Cicero, though, in his endeavor to follow his own tastes,
+he made a strong effort to keep himself free from such work, and to
+remain at Rome instead of being sent abroad as a Governor, had at last
+to go where fighting was in some degree necessary, and, in the saddest
+phase of his life, appeared in Italy with his lictors, demanding the
+honors of a triumph. In anticipation of such a career, no doubt under
+the advice of his friends, he now went out to see, if not a battle,
+something, at any rate, of war. It has already been said how the
+citizenship of Rome was conferred on some of the small Italian States
+around, and not on others. Hence, of course, arose jealousy, which was
+increased by the feeling on the part of those excluded that they were
+called to furnish soldiers to Rome, as well as those who were included.
+Then there was formed a combination of Italian cities, sworn to remedy
+the injury thus inflicted on them. Their purpose was to fight Rome in
+order that they might achieve Roman citizenship; and hence arose the
+first civil war which distracted the Empire. Pompeius Strabo, father of
+Pompey the Great, was then Consul (B.C. 89), and Cicero was sent out to
+see the campaign under him. Marius and Sulla, the two Romans who were
+destined soon to bathe Rome in blood, had not yet quarrelled, though
+they had been brought to hate each other--Marius by jealousy, and Sulla
+by rivalry. In this war they both served under the Consuls, and Cicero
+served with Sulla. We know nothing of his doings in that campaign. There
+are no tidings even of a misfortune such as that which happened to
+Horace when he went out to fight, and came home from the battle-field
+"relicta non bene parmula."
+
+Rome trampled on the rebellious cities, and in the end admitted them to
+citizenship. But probably the most important, certainly the most
+notorious, result of the Italian war, was the deep antagonism of Marius
+and Sulla. Sulla had made himself conspicuous by his fortune on the
+occasion, whereas Marius, who had become the great soldier of the
+Republic, and had been six times Consul, failed to gather fresh laurels.
+Rome was falling into that state of anarchy which was the cause of all
+the glory and all the disgrace of Cicero's life, and was open to the
+dominion of any soldier whose grasp might be the least scrupulous and
+the strongest. Marius, after a series of romantic adventures with which
+we must not connect ourselves here, was triumphant only just before his
+death, while Sulla went off with his army, pillaged Athens, plundered
+Asia Minor generally, and made terms with Mithridates, though he did not
+conquer him. With the purport, no doubt, of conquering Mithridates, but
+perhaps with the stronger object of getting him out of Rome, the army
+had been intrusted to him, with the consent of the Marian faction.
+
+Then came those three years, when Sulla was in the East and Marius dead,
+of which Cicero speaks as a period of peace, in which a student was able
+to study in Rome. "Triennium fere fuit urbs sine armis."[41] These must
+have been the years 86, 85, and 84 before Christ, when Cicero was
+twenty-one, twenty-two, and twenty-three years old; and it was this
+period, in truth, of which he speaks, and not of earlier years, when he
+tells us of his studies with Philo, and Molo, and Diodatus. Precocious
+as he was in literature, writing one poem--or translating it--when he
+was fourteen, and another when he was eighteen, he was by no means in a
+hurry to commence the work of his life. He is said also to have written
+a treatise on military tactics when he was nineteen; which again, no
+doubt, means that he had exercised himself by translating such an essay
+from the Greek. This, happily, does not remain. But we have four books,
+Rhetoricorum ad C. Herennium, and two books De Inventione, attributed to
+his twentieth and twenty-first years, which are published with his
+works, and commence the series. Of all that we have from him, they are
+perhaps the least worth reading; but as they are, or were, among his
+recognized writings, a word shall be said of them in their proper place.
+
+The success of the education of Cicero probably became a commonplace
+among Latin school-masters and Latin writers. In the dialogue De
+Oratoribus, attributed to Tacitus, the story of it is given by Messala
+when he is praising the orators of the earlier age. "We know well," says
+Messala, "that book of Cicero which is called Brutus, in the latter part
+of which he describes to us the beginning and the progress of his own
+eloquence, and, as it were, the bringing up on which it was founded. He
+tells us that he had learned civil law under Q. Mutius Scęvola; that he
+had exhausted the realm of philosophy--learning that of the Academy
+under Philo, and that of the Stoics under Diodatus; that, not content
+with these treatises, he had travelled through Greece and Asia, so as to
+embrace the whole world of art. And thus it had come about that in the
+works of Cicero no knowledge is wanting--neither of music, nor of
+grammar, nor any other liberal accomplishment. He understood the
+subtilty of logic, the purpose of ethics, the effects and causes of
+things." Then the speaker goes on to explain what may be expected from
+study such as that. "Thus it is, my good friends--thus, that from the
+acquirement of many arts, and from a general knowledge of all things,
+eloquence that is truly admirable is created in its full force; for the
+power and capacity of an orator need not be hemmed in, as are those of
+other callings, by certain narrow bounds; but that man is the true
+orator who is able to speak on all subjects with dignity and grace, so
+as to persuade those who listen, and to delight them, in a manner suited
+to the nature of the subject in hand and the convenience of the
+time."[42]
+
+We might fancy that we were reading words from Cicero himself! Then the
+speaker in this imaginary conversation goes on to tell us how far
+matters had derogated in his time, pointing out at the same time that
+the evils which he deplores had shown themselves even before Cicero, but
+had been put down, as far as the law could put them down, by its
+interference. He is speaking of those schools of rhetoric in which Greek
+professors of the art gave lessons for money, which were evil in their
+nature, and not, as it appears, efficacious even for the purpose in
+hand. "But now," continues Messala, "our very boys are brought into the
+schools of those lecturers who are called 'rhetores,' who had sprung up
+before Cicero, to the displeasure of our ancestors, as is evident from
+the fact that when Crassus and Domitius were Censors they were ordered
+to shut up their school of impudence, as Cicero calls it. Our boys, as I
+was going to say, are taken to these lecture-rooms, in which it is hard
+to say whether the atmosphere of the place, or the lads they are thrown
+among, or the nature of the lessons taught, are the most injurious. In
+the place itself there is neither discipline nor respect. All who go
+there are equally ignorant. The boys among the boys, the lads among the
+lads, utter and listen to just what words they please. Their very
+exercises are, for the most part, useless. Two kinds are in vogue with
+these 'rhetores,' called 'suasorię' and 'controversię,'" tending, we may
+perhaps say, to persuade or to refute. "Of these, the 'suasorię,' as
+being the lighter and requiring less of experience, are given to the
+little boys, the 'controversię' to the bigger lads. But--oh heavens,
+what they are--what miserable compositions!" Then he tells us the
+subjects selected. Rape, incest, and other horrors are subjected to the
+lads for their declamation, in order that they may learn to be orators.
+
+Messala then explains that in those latter days--his days, that
+is--under the rule of despotic princes, truly large subjects are not
+allowed to be discussed in public--confessing, however, that those large
+subjects, though they afford fine opportunities to orators, are not
+beneficial to the State at large. But it was thus, he says, that Cicero
+became what he was, who would not have grown into favor had he defended
+only P. Quintius and Archias, and had had nothing to do with Catiline,
+or Milo, or Verres, or Antony--showing, by-the-way, how great was the
+reputation of that speech, Pro Milone, with which we shall have to deal
+farther on.
+
+The treatise becomes somewhat confused, a portion of it having
+probably been lost. From whose mouth the last words are supposed to
+come is not apparent. It ends with a rhapsody in favor of imperial
+government--suitable, indeed, to the time of Domitian, but very unlike
+Tacitus. While, however, it praises despotism, it declares that only by
+the evils which despotism had quelled could eloquence be maintained.
+"Our country, indeed, while it was astray in its government; while it
+tore itself to pieces by parties and quarrels and discord; while there
+was no peace in the Forum, no agreement in the Senate, no moderation on
+the judgment-seat, no reverence for letters, no control among the
+magistrates, boasted, no doubt, a stronger eloquence."
+
+From what we are thus told of Cicero, not what we hear from himself, we
+are able to form an idea of the nature of his education. With his mind
+fixed from his early days on the ambition of doing something noble with
+himself, he gave himself up to all kinds of learning. It was Macaulay, I
+think, who said of him that the idea of conquering the "omne
+scibile,"--the understanding of all things within the reach of human
+intellect--was before his eyes as it was before those of Bacon. The
+special preparation which was, in Cicero's time, employed for students
+at the bar is also described in the treatise from which I have
+quoted--the preparation which is supposed to have been the very opposite
+of that afforded by the "rhetores." "Among ourselves, the youth who was
+intended to achieve eloquence in the Forum, when already trained at home
+and exercised in classical knowledge, was brought by his father or his
+friends to that orator who might then be considered to be the leading
+man in the city. It became his daily work to follow that man, to
+accompany him, to be conversant with all his speeches, whether in the
+courts of law or at public meetings, so that he might learn, if I might
+say so, to fight in the very thick of the throng." It was thus that
+Cicero studied his art. A few lines farther down, the pseudo-Tacitus
+tells us that Crassus, in his nineteenth year, held a brief against
+Carbo; that Cęsar did so in his twenty-first against Dolabella; and
+Pollio, in his twenty-second year, against Cato.[43] In this precocity
+Cicero did not imitate Crassus, or show an example to the Romans who
+followed him. He was twenty-six when he pleaded his first cause. Sulla
+had then succeeded in crushing the Marian faction, and the Sullan
+proscriptions had taken place, and were nominally over. Sulla had been
+declared Dictator, and had proclaimed that there should be no more
+selections for death. The Republic was supposed to be restored.
+"Recuperata republica * * * tum primum nos ad causas et privatas et
+publicas adire c[oe]pimus,"[44] "The Republic having been restored, I then
+first applied myself to pleadings, both private and public."
+
+Of Cicero's politics at that time we are enabled to form a fair
+judgment. Marius had been his townsman; Sulla had been his captain. But
+the one thing dear to him was the Republic--what he thought to be the
+Republic. He was neither Marian nor Sullan. The turbulence in which so
+much noble blood had flowed--the "crudelis interitus oratorum," the
+crushing out of the old legalized form of government--was abominable to
+him. It was his hope, no doubt his expectation, that these old forms
+should be restored in all their power. There seemed to be more
+probability of this--there was more probability of it--on the side of
+Sulla than the other. On Sulla's side was Pompey, the then rising man,
+who, being of the same age with Cicero, had already pushed himself into
+prominence, who was surnamed the Great, and who "triumphed" during these
+very two years in which Cicero began his career; who through Cicero's
+whole life was his bugbear, his stumbling-block, and his mistake. But on
+that side were the "optimates," the men who, if they did not lead, ought
+to lead the Republic; those who, if they were not respectable, ought to
+be so; those who, if they did not love their country, ought to love it.
+If there was a hope, it was with them. The old state of things--that
+oligarchy which has been called a Republic--had made Rome what it was;
+had produced power, civilization, art, and literature. It had enabled
+such a one as Cicero was himself to aspire to lead, though he had been
+humbly born, and had come to Rome from an untried provincial family. To
+him the Republic--as he fancied that it had been, as he fancied that it
+might be--was all that was good, all that was gracious, all that was
+beneficent. On Sulla's side lay what chance there was of returning to
+the old ways. When Sulla was declared Dictator, it was presumed that the
+Republic was restored. But not on this account should it be supposed
+that Cicero regarded the proscriptions of Sulla with favor, or that he
+was otherwise than shocked by the wholesale robberies for which the
+proscription paved the way. This is a matter with which it will be
+necessary to deal more fully when we come in our next chapter to the
+first speeches made by Cicero; in the very first of which, as I place
+them, he attacks the Sullan robberies with an audacity which, when we
+remember that Sulla was still in power, rescues, at any rate, in regard
+to this period of his life, the character of the orator from that charge
+of cowardice which has been imputed to him.
+
+It is necessary here, in this chapter devoted to the education of
+Cicero, to allude to his two first speeches, because that education was
+not completed till afterward--so that they may be regarded as
+experiments, or trials, as it were, of his force and sufficiency. "Not
+content with these teachers"--teachers who had come to Rome from Greece
+and Asia--"he had travelled through Greece and Asia, so as to embrace
+the whole world of art." These words, quoted a few pages back from the
+treatise attributed to Tacitus, refer to a passage in the Brutus in
+which Cicero makes a statement to that effect. "When I reached
+Athens,[45] I passed six months with Antiochus, by far the best known
+and most erudite of the teachers of the old Academy, and with him, as my
+great authority and master, I renewed that study of philosophy which I
+had never abandoned--which from my boyhood I had followed with always
+increasing success. At the same time I practised oratory laboriously
+with Demetrius Syrus, also at Athens, a well-known and by no means
+incapable master of the art of speaking. After that I wandered over all
+Asia, and came across the best orators there, with whom I practised,
+enjoying their willing assistance." There is more of it, which need not
+be repeated verbatim, giving the names of those who aided him in Asia:
+Menippus of Stratonice--who, he says, was sweet enough to have belonged
+himself to Athens--with Dionysius of Magnesia, with [OE]schilus of Cnidos,
+and with Xenocles of Adramyttium. Then at Rhodes he came across his old
+friend Molo, and applied himself again to the teaching of his former
+master. Quintilian explains to us how this was done with a purpose, so
+that the young orator, when he had made a first attempt with his
+half-fledged wings in the courts, might go back to his masters for
+awhile[46].
+
+He was twenty-eight when he started on this tour. It has been suggested
+that he did so in fear of the resentment of Sulla, with whose favorites
+and with whose practices he had dealt very plainly. There is no reason
+for alleging this, except that Sulla was powerful, that Sulla was
+blood-thirsty, and that Sulla must have been offended. This kind of
+argument is often used. It is supposed to be natural, or at least
+probable, that in a certain position a man should have been a coward or
+a knave, ungrateful or cruel; and in the presumption thus raised the
+accusation is brought against him. "Fearing Sulla's resentment,"
+Plutarch says, "he travelled into Greece, and gave out that the recovery
+of his health was the motive." There is no evidence that such was his
+reason for travelling; and, as Middleton says in his behalf, it is
+certain that he "continued for a year after this in Rome without any
+apprehension of danger." It is best to take a man's own account of his
+own doings and their causes, unless there be ground for doubting the
+statement made. It is thus that Cicero himself speaks of his journey:
+"Now," he says, still in his Brutus[47], "as you wish to know what I
+am--not simply what mark I may have on my body from my birth, or with
+what surroundings of childhood I was brought up--I will include some
+details which might perhaps seem hardly necessary. At this time I was
+thin and weak, my neck being long and narrow--a habit and form of body
+which is supposed to be adverse to long life; and those who loved me
+thought the more of this, because I had taken to speaking without
+relaxation, without recreation with all the powers of my voice, and with
+much muscular action. When my friends and the doctors desired me to give
+up speaking, I resolved that, rather than abandon my career as an
+orator, I would face any danger. But when it occurred to me that by
+lowering my voice, by changing my method of speaking, I might avoid the
+danger, and at the same time learn to speak with more elegance, I
+accepted that as a reason for going into Asia, so that I might study how
+to change my mode of elocution. Thus, when I had been two years at work
+upon causes, and when my name was already well known in the Forum, I
+took my departure, and left Rome."
+
+During the six months that he was at Athens he renewed an early
+acquaintance with one who was destined to become the most faithful, and
+certainly the best known, of his friends. This was Titus Pomponius,
+known to the world as that Atticus to whom were addressed something more
+than half the large body of letters which were written by Cicero, and
+which have remained for our use.[48] He seems to have lived much with
+Atticus, who was occupied with similar studies, though with altogether
+different results. Atticus applied himself to the practices of the
+Epicurean school, and did in truth become "Epicuri de grege porcus." To
+enjoy life, to amass a fortune, to keep himself free from all turmoils
+of war or state, to make the best of the times, whether they were bad or
+good, without any attempt on his part to mend them--this was the
+philosophy of Titus Pomponius, who was called Atticus because Athens,
+full of art and literature, easy, unenergetic, and luxurious, was dear
+to him. To this philosophy, or rather to this theory of life, Cicero was
+altogether opposed. He studied in all the schools--among the Platonists,
+the Stoics, even with the Epicureans enough to know their dogmas so that
+he might criticise them--proclaiming himself to belong to the new
+Academy, or younger school of Platonists, but in truth drawing no system
+of morals or rule of life from any of them. To him, and also to Atticus,
+no doubt, these pursuits afforded an intellectual pastime. Atticus found
+himself able to justify to himself the bent of his disposition by the
+name of a philosopher, and therefore became an Epicurean. Cicero could
+in no way justify to himself any deviation from the energy of public
+life, from its utility, from its ambition, from its loves, or from its
+hatred; and from the Greek philosophers whom he named of this or the
+other school, received only some assistance in that handling of
+so-called philosophy which became the chief amusement of his future
+life. This was well understood by the Latin authors who wrote of Cicero
+after his own time. Quintilian, speaking of Cicero and Brutus as writers
+of philosophy, says of the latter, "Suffecit ponderi rerum; scias enim
+sentire quę dicit."[49]--"He was equal to the weight of the subject, for
+you feel that he believes what he writes." He leaves the inference, of
+course, that Cicero wrote on such matters only for the exercise of his
+ingenuity, as a school-boy writes.
+
+When at Athens, Cicero was initiated into the Eleusinian mysteries--as
+to which Mr. Collins, in his little volume on Cicero, in the Ancient
+Classics for English Readers, says that they "contained under this veil
+whatever faith in the Invisible and Eternal rested in the mind of an
+enlightened pagan." In this Mr. Collins is fully justified by what
+Cicero himself has said although the character thus given to these
+mysteries is very different from that which was attributed to them by
+early Christian writers. They were to those pious but somewhat
+prejudiced theologists mysterious and pagan, and therefore horrible.[50]
+But Cicero declares in his dialogue with Atticus, De Legibus, written
+when he was fifty-five years old, in the prime of his intellect, that
+"of all the glories and divine gifts which your Athens has produced for
+the improvement of men nothing surpasses these mysteries, by which the
+harshness of our uncivilized life has been softened, and we have been
+lifted up to humanity; and as they are called 'initia,'" by which
+aspirants were initiated, "so we have in truth found in them the seeds
+of a new life. Nor have we received from them only the means of living
+with satisfaction, but also of dying with a better hope as to the
+future."[51]
+
+Of what took place with Cicero and Atticus at their introduction to the
+Eleusinian mysteries we know nothing. But it can hardly be that, with
+such memories running in his mind after thirty years, expressed in such
+language to the very friend who had then been his companion, they should
+not have been accepted by him as indicating the commencement of some
+great line of thought. The two doctrines which seem to mark most clearly
+the difference between the men whom we regard, the one as a pagan and
+the other as a Christian, are the belief in a future life and the duty
+of doing well by our neighbors. Here they are both indicated, the former
+in plain language, and the latter in that assurance of the softening of
+the barbarity of uncivilized life, "Quibus ex agresti immanique vita
+exculti ad humanitatem et mitigati sumus."
+
+Of the inner life of Cicero at this moment--how he ate, how he drank,
+with what accompaniment of slaves he lived, how he was dressed, and how
+lodged--we know very little; but we are told enough to be aware that he
+could not have travelled, as he did in Greece and Asia, without great
+expense. His brother Quintus was with him, so that cost, if not double,
+was greatly increased. Antiochus, Demetrius Syrus, Molo, Menippus, and
+the others did not give him their services for nothing. These were
+gentlemen of whom we know that they were anxious to carry their wares to
+the best market. And then he seems to have been welcomed wherever he
+went, as though travelling in some sort "en prince." No doubt he had
+brought with him the best introductions which Rome could afford; but
+even with them a generous allowance must have been necessary, and this
+must have come from his father's pocket.
+
+As we go on, a question will arise as to Cicero's income and the sources
+whence it came. He asserts of himself that he was never paid for his
+services at the bar. To receive such payment was illegal, but was usual.
+He claims to have kept himself exempt from whatever meanness there may
+have been in so receiving such fees--exempt, at any rate, from the fault
+of having broken the law. He has not been believed. There is no evidence
+to convict him of falsehood, but he has not been believed, because there
+have not been found palpable sources of income sufficient for an
+expenditure so great as that which we know to have been incident to the
+life he led. But we do not know what were his father's means. Seeing the
+nature of the education given to the lad, of the manner in which his
+future life was prepared for him from his earliest days, of the promise
+made to him from his boyhood of a career in the metropolis if he could
+make himself fit for it, of the advantages which costly travel afforded
+him, I think we have reason to suppose that the old Cicero was an
+opulent man, and that the house at Arpinum was no humble farm, or
+fuller's poor establishment.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+_THE CONDITION OF ROME._
+
+
+It is far from my intention to write a history of Rome during the
+Ciceronian period. Were I to attempt such a work, I should have to
+include the doings of Sertorius in Spain, of Lucullus and Pompey in the
+East, Cęsar's ten years in Gaul, and the civil wars from the taking of
+Marseilles to the final battles of Thapsus and Munda. With very many of
+the great events which the period includes Cicero took but slight
+concern--so slight that we can hardly fail to be astonished when we find
+how little he had to say of them--he who ran through all the offices of
+the State, who was the chosen guardian of certain allied cities, who has
+left to us so large a mass of correspondence on public subjects, and who
+was essentially a public man for thirty-four years. But he was a public
+man who concerned himself personally with Rome rather than with the
+Roman Empire. Home affairs, and not foreign affairs, were dear to him.
+To Cęsar's great deeds in Gaul we should have had from him almost no
+allusion, had not his brother Quintus been among Cęsar's officers, and
+his young friend Trebatius been confided by himself to Cęsar's care. Of
+Pharsalia we only learn from him that, in utter despair of heart, he
+allowed himself to be carried to the war. Of the proconsular governments
+throughout the Roman Empire we should not learn much from Cicero, were
+it not that it has been shown to us by the trial of Verres how atrocious
+might be the conduct of a Roman Governor, and by the narratives of
+Cicero's own rule in Cilicia, how excellent. The history of the time has
+been written for modern readers by Merivale and Mommsen, with great
+research and truth as to facts, but, as I think with some strong
+feeling. Now Mr. Froude has followed with his Cęsar, which might well
+have been called Anti-Cicero. All these in lauding, and the two latter
+in deifying, the successful soldier, have, I think, dealt hardly with
+Cicero, attributing to his utterances more than they mean; doubting his
+sincerity, but seeing clearly the failure of his political efforts. With
+the great facts of the Roman Empire as they gradually formed themselves
+from the fall of Carthage, when the Empire began,[52] to the
+establishment of Augustus, when it was consummated, I do not pretend to
+deal, although by far the most momentous of them were crowded into the
+life of Cicero. But in order that I may, if possible, show the condition
+of his mind toward the Republic--that I may explain what it was that he
+hoped and why he hoped it--I must go back and relate in a few words what
+it was that Marius and Sulla had done for Rome.
+
+Of both these men all the doings with which history is greatly concerned
+were comprised within the early years of Cicero's life. Marius, indeed,
+was nearly fifty years of age when his fellow-townsman was born, and had
+become a distinguished soldier, and, though born of humble parents, had
+pushed himself to the Consulate. His quarrel with Sulla had probably
+commenced, springing from jealousy as to deeds done in the Jugurthine
+war. But it is not matter of much moment, now that Marius had proved
+himself to be a good and hardy soldier, excepting in this, that, by
+making himself a soldier in early life, he enabled himself in his latter
+years to become the master of Rome.
+
+Sulla, too, was born thirty-two years before Cicero--a patrician of the
+bluest blood--and having gone, as we say, into public life, and having
+been elected Quęstor, became a soldier by dint of office, as a man with
+us may become head of the Admiralty. As Quęstor he was sent to join
+Marius in Africa a few months before Cicero was born. Into his hands, as
+it happened, not into those of Marius, Jugurtha was surrendered by his
+father-in-law, Bocchus, who thought thus to curry favor with the Romans.
+Thence came those internecine feuds, in which, some twenty-five years
+later, all Rome was lying butchered. The cause of quarrelling between
+these two men, the jealousies which grew in the heart of the elder, from
+the renewed successes of the younger, are not much to us now; but the
+condition to which Rome had been brought, when two such men could
+scramble for the city, and each cut the throats of the relatives,
+friends, and presumed allies of the other, has to be inquired into by
+those who would understand what Rome had been, what it was, and what it
+was necessarily to become.
+
+When Cicero was of an age to begin to think of these things, and had put
+on the "toga virilis," and girt himself with a sword to fight under the
+father of Pompey for the power of Rome against the Italian allies who
+were demanding citizenship, the quarrel was in truth rising to its
+bitterness. Marius and Sulla were on the same side in that war. But
+Marius had then not only been Consul, but had been six times Consul; and
+he had beaten the Teutons and the Cimbrians, by whom Romans had feared
+that all Italy would be occupied. What was not within the power of such
+a leader of soldiers? and what else but a leader of soldiers could
+prevail when Italy and Rome, but for such a General, had been at the
+mercy of barbaric hordes, and when they had been compelled to make that
+General six times Consul?
+
+Marius seems to have been no politician. He became a soldier and then a
+General; and because he was great as a soldier and General, the affairs
+of the State fell into his hands with very little effort. In the old
+days of Rome military power had been needed for defence, and successful
+defence had of course produced aggressive masterhood and increased
+territory. When Hannibal, while he was still lingering in Italy, had
+been circumvented by the appearance of Scipio in Africa and the Romans
+had tasted the increased magnificence of external conquest, the desire
+for foreign domination became stronger than that of native rule. From
+that time arms were in the ascendant rather than policy. Up to that time
+a Consul had to become a General, because it was his business to look
+after the welfare of the State. After that time a man became a Consul in
+order that he might be a General. The toga was made to give way to the
+sword, and the noise of the Forum to the trumpets. We, looking back now,
+can see that it must have been so, and we are prone to fancy that a wise
+man looking forward then might have read the future. In the days of
+Marius there was probably no man so wise. Cęsar was the first to see it.
+Cicero would have seen it, but that the idea was so odious to him that
+he could not acknowledge to himself that it need be so. His life was one
+struggle against the coming evil--against the time in which brute force
+was to be made to dominate intellect and civilization. His "cedant arma
+togę" was a scream, an impotent scream, against all that Sulla had done
+or Cęsar was about to do. The mischief had been effected years before
+his time, and had gone too far ahead to be arrested even by his tongue.
+Only, in considering these things, let us confess that Cicero saw what
+was good and what was evil, though he was mistaken in believing that the
+good was still within reach.
+
+Marius in his way was a Cęsar--as a soldier, undoubtedly a very
+efficient Cęsar--having that great gift of ruling his own appetites
+which enables those who possess it to conquer the appetites of others.
+It may be doubted whether his quickness in stopping and overcoming the
+two great hordes from the north, the Teutons and the Cimbrians, was not
+equal in strategy to anything that Cęsar accomplished in Gaul. It is
+probable that Cęsar learned much of his tactics from studying the
+man[oe]uvres of Marius. But Marius was only a General. Though he became
+hot in Roman politics, audacious and confident, knowing how to use and
+how to disregard various weapons of political power as they had been
+handed down by tradition and law, the "vetoes" and the auguries, and the
+official dignities, he used them, or disregarded them, in quest only of
+power for himself. He was able to perceive how vain was law in such a
+period as that in which he lived; and that, having risen by force of
+arms, he must by force of arms keep his place or lose his life. With
+him, at least, there was no idea of Roman liberty, little probably of
+Roman glory, except so far as military glory and military power go
+together.
+
+Sulla was a man endowed with a much keener insight into the political
+condition of the world around him. To make a dash for power, as a dog
+might do, and keep it in his clutch as a dog would, was enough for
+Marius. Sulla could see something of future events. He could understand
+that, by reducing men around him to a low level, he could make fast his
+own power over them, and that he could best do this by cutting off the
+heads of all who stood a little higher than their neighbors. He might
+thus produce tranquillity, and security to himself and others. Some
+glimmer of an idea of an Augustan rule was present to him; and with the
+view of producing it, he re-established many of the usages of the
+Republic, not reproducing the liberty but the forms of liberty. It seems
+to have been his idea that a Sullan party might rule the Empire by
+adherence to these forms. I doubt if Marius had any fixed idea of
+government. To get the better of his enemies, and then to grind them
+into powder under his feet, to seize rank and power and riches, and then
+to enjoy them, to sate his lust with blood and money and women, at last
+even with wine, and to feed his revenge by remembering the hard things
+which he was made to endure during the period of his overthrow--this
+seems to have been enough for Marius.[53] With Sulla there was
+understanding that the Empire must be ruled, and that the old ways would
+be best if they could be made compatible with the newly-concentrated
+power.
+
+The immediate effect upon Rome, either from one or from the other, was
+nearly the same. In the year 87 B.C. Marius occupied himself in
+slaughtering the Sullan party--during which, however, Sulla escaped from
+Rome to the army of which he was selected as General, and proceeded to
+Athens and the East with the object of conquering Mithridates; for,
+during these personal contests, the command of this expedition had been
+the chief bone of contention among them. Marius, who was by age
+unfitted, desired to obtain it in order that Sulla might not have it. In
+the next year, 86 B.C., Marius died, being then Consul for the seventh
+time. Sulla was away in the East, and did not return till 83 B.C. In the
+interval was that period of peace, fit for study, of which Cicero
+afterward spoke. "Triennium fere fuit urbs sine armis."[54] Cicero was
+then twenty-two or twenty-three years old, and must well have
+understood, from his remembrance of the Marian massacres, what it was to
+have the city embroiled by arms. It was not that men were fighting, but
+that they were simply being killed at the pleasure of the slaughterer.
+Then Sulla came back, 83 B.C., when Cicero was twenty-four; and if
+Marius had scourged the city with rods, he scourged it with scorpions.
+It was the city, in truth, that was scourged, and not simply the hostile
+faction. Sulla began by proscribing 520 citizens declaring that he had
+included in his list all that he remembered, and that those forgotten
+should be added on another day. The numbers were gradually raised to
+4,700! Nor did this merely mean that those named should be caught and
+killed by some miscalled officers of justice.[55] All the public was
+armed against the wretched, and any who should protect them were also
+doomed to death. This, however, might have been comparatively
+inefficacious to inflict the amount of punishment intended by Sulla. Men
+generally do not specially desire to imbrue their hands in the blood of
+other men. Unless strong hatred be at work, the ordinary man, even the
+ordinary Roman, will hardly rise up and slaughter another for the sake
+of the employment. But if lucre be added to blood, then blood can be
+made to flow copiously. This was what Sulla did. Not only was the
+victim's life proscribed, but his property was proscribed also; and the
+man who busied himself in carrying out the great butcher's business
+assiduously, ardently, and unintermittingly, was rewarded by the
+property so obtained. Two talents[56] was to be the fee for mere
+assassination; but the man who knew how to carry on well the work of an
+informer could earn many talents. It was thus that fortunes were made in
+the last days of Sulla. It was not only those 520 who were named for
+killing. They were but the firstlings of the flock--the few victims
+selected before the real workmen understood how valuable a trade
+proscription and confiscation might be made. Plutarch tells us how a
+quiet gentleman walking, as was his custom, in the Forum, one who took
+no part in politics, saw his own name one day on the list. He had an
+Alban villa, and at once knew that his villa had been his ruin. He had
+hardly read the list, and had made his exclamation, before he was
+slaughtered. Such was the massacre of Sulla, coming with an interval of
+two or three years after those of Marius, between which was the blessed
+time in which Rome was without arms. In the time of Marius, Cicero was
+too young, and of no sufficient importance, on account of his birth or
+parentage, to fear anything. Nor is it probable that Marius would have
+turned against his townsmen. When Sulla's turn came, Cicero, though not
+absolutely connected with the Dictator, was, so to say, on his side in
+politics. In going back even to this period we may use the terms
+Liberals and Conservatives for describing the two parties. Marius was
+for the people; that is to say, he was opposed to the rule of the
+oligarchy, dispersed the Senate, and loved to feel that his own feet
+were on the necks of the nobility. Of liberty, or rights, or popular
+institutions he recked nothing; but not the less was he supposed to be
+on the people's side. Sulla, on the other hand, had been born a
+patrician, and affected to preserve the old traditions of oligarchic
+rule; and, indeed, though he took all the power of the State into his
+own hands, he did restore, and for a time preserve, these old
+traditions. It must be presumed that there was at his heart something of
+love for old Rome. The proscriptions began toward the end of the year 82
+B.C., and were continued through eight or nine fearful months--up to the
+beginning of June, 81 B.C. A day was fixed at which there should be no
+more slaughtering--no more slaughtering, that is, without special order
+in each case, and no more confiscation--except such as might be judged
+necessary by those who had not as yet collected their prey from past
+victims. Then Sulla, as Dictator, set himself to work to reorganize the
+old laws. There should still be Consuls and Prętors, but with restricted
+powers, lessened almost down to nothing. It seems hard to gather what
+was exactly the Dictator's scheme as the future depositary of power when
+he should himself have left the scene. He did increase the privileges of
+the Senate; but thinking of the Senate of Rome as he must have thought
+of it, esteeming those old men as lowly as he must have esteemed them,
+he could hardly have intended that imperial power should be maintained
+by dividing it among them. He certainly contemplated no follower to
+himself, no heir to his power, as Cęsar did. When he had been
+practically Dictator about three years--though he did not continue the
+use of the objectionable name--he resigned his rule and walked down, as
+it were, from his throne into private life. I know nothing in history
+more remarkable than Sulla's resignation; and yet the writers who have
+dealt with his name give no explanation of it. Plutarch, his biographer,
+expresses wonder that he should have been willing to descend to private
+life, and that he who made so many enemies should have been able to do
+so with security. Cicero says nothing of it. He had probably left Rome
+before it occurred, and did not return till after Sulla's death. It
+seems to have been accepted as being in no especial way remarkable.[57]
+At his own demand, the plenary power of Dictator had been given to
+him--power to do all as he liked, without reference either to the Senate
+or to the people, and with an added proviso that he should keep it as
+long as he thought fit, and lay it down when it pleased him. He did lay
+it down, flattering himself, probably, that, as he had done his work, he
+would walk out from his dictatorship like some Camillus of old. There
+had been no Dictator in Rome for more than a century and a quarter--not
+since the time of Hannibal's great victories; and the old dictatorships
+lasted but for a few months or weeks, after which the Dictator, having
+accomplished the special task, threw up his office. Sulla now affected
+to do the same; and Rome, after the interval of three years, accepted
+the resignation in the old spirit. It was natural to them, though only
+by tradition, that a Dictator should resign--so natural that it required
+no special wonder. The salt of the Roman Constitution was gone, but the
+remembrance of the savor of it was still sweet to the minds of the
+Romans.
+
+It seems certain that no attempt was made to injure Sulla when he ceased
+to be nominally at the head of the army, but it is probable that he did
+not so completely divest himself of power as to be without protection.
+In the year after his abdication he died, at the age of sixty-one,
+apparently strong as regards general health, but, if Plutarch's story be
+true, affected with a terrible cutaneous disease. Modern writers have
+spoken of Sulla as though they would fain have praised him if they
+dared, because, in spite of his demoniac cruelty, he recognized the
+expediency of bringing the affairs of the Republic again into order.
+Middleton calls him the "only man in history in whom the odium of the
+most barbarous cruelties was extinguished by the glory of his great
+acts." Mommsen, laying the blame of the proscriptions on the head of the
+oligarchy, speaks of Sulla as being either a sword or a pen in the
+service of the State, as a sword or a pen would be required, and
+declares that, in regard to the total "absence of political
+selfishness--although it is true in this respect only--Sulla deserves to
+be named side by side with Washington."[58] To us at present who are
+endeavoring to investigate the sources and the nature of Cicero's
+character, the attributes of this man would be but of little moment,
+were it not that Cicero was probably Cicero because Sulla had been
+Sulla. Horrid as the proscriptions and confiscations were to Cicero--and
+his opinion of them was expressed plainly enough when it was dangerous
+to express them[59]--still it was apparent to him that the cause of
+order (what we may call the best chance for the Republic) lay with the
+Senate and with the old traditions and laws of Rome, in the
+re-establishment of which Sulla had employed himself. Of these
+institutions Mommsen speaks with a disdain which we now cannot but feel
+to be justified. "On the Roman oligarchy of this period," he says "no
+judgment can be passed save one of inexorable and remorseless
+condemnation; and, like everything connected with it, the Sullan
+constitution is involved in that condemnation."[60] We have to admit
+that the salt had gone out from it, and that there was no longer left
+any savor by which it could be preserved. But the German historian seems
+to err somewhat in this, as have also some modern English historians,
+that they have not sufficiently seen that the men of the day had not the
+means of knowing all that they, the historians, know. Sulla and his
+Senate thought that by massacring the Marian faction they had restored
+everything to an equilibrium. Sulla himself seems to have believed that
+when the thing was accomplished Rome would go on, and grow in power and
+prosperity as she had grown, without other reforms than those which he
+had initiated. There can be no doubt that many of the best in Rome--the
+best in morals, the best in patriotism, and the best in erudition--did
+think that, with the old forms, the old virtue would come back. Pompey
+thought so, and Cicero. Cato thought so, and Brutus. Cęsar, when he came
+to think about it, thought the reverse. But even now to us, looking back
+with so many things made clear to us, with all the convictions which
+prolonged success produces, it is doubtful whether some other milder
+change--some such change as Cicero would have advocated--might not have
+prevented the tyranny of Augustus, the mysteries of Tiberius, the freaks
+of Caligula, the folly of Claudius, and the madness of Nero.
+
+It is an uphill task, that of advocating the cause of a man who has
+failed. The Cęsars of the world are they who make interesting stories.
+That Cicero failed in the great purpose of his life has to be
+acknowledged. He had studied the history of his country, and was aware
+that hitherto the world had produced nothing so great as Roman power;
+and he knew that Rome had produced true patriotism. Her Consuls, her
+Censors, her Tribunes, and her Generals had, as a rule, been true to
+Rome, serving their country, at any rate till of late years, rather than
+themselves. And he believed that liberty had existed in Rome, though
+nowhere else. It would be well if we could realize the idea of liberty
+which Cicero entertained. Liberty was very dear to him--dear to him not
+only as enjoying it himself, but as a privilege for the enjoyment of
+others. But it was only the liberty of a few. Half the population of the
+Roman cities were slaves, and in Cicero's time the freedom of the city,
+which he regarded as necessary to liberty, belonged only to a small
+proportion of the population of Italy. It was the liberty of a small
+privileged class for which he was anxious. That a Sicilian should be
+free under a Roman Proconsul, as a Roman citizen was entitled to be, was
+abhorrent to his doctrine. The idea of cosmopolitan freedom--an idea
+which exists with us, but is not common to very many even now--had not
+as yet been born: that care for freedom which springs from a desire to
+do to others as we would that they should do to us. It required Christ
+to father that idea; and Cicero, though he was nearer to Christianity
+than any who had yet existed, had not reached it. But this liberty,
+though it was but of a few, was so dear to him that he spent his life in
+an endeavor to preserve it. The kings had been expelled from Rome
+because they had trampled on liberty. Then came the Republic, which we
+know to have been at its best no more than an oligarchy; but still it
+was founded on the idea that everything should be done by the votes of
+the free people. For many years everything was done by the votes of the
+free people. Under what inducements they had voted is another question.
+Clients were subject to their patrons, and voted as they were told. We
+have heard of that even in England, where many of us still think that
+such a way of voting is far from objectionable. Perhaps compulsion was
+sometimes used--a sort of "rattening" by which large bodies were driven
+to the poll to carry this or the other measure. Simple eloquence
+prevailed with some, and with others flattery. Then corruption became
+rampant, as was natural, the rich buying the votes of the poor; and
+votes were bought in various ways--by cheap food as well as by money, by
+lavish expenditure in games, by promises of land, and other means of
+bribery more or less overt. This was bad, of course. Every freeman
+should have given a vote according to his conscience. But in what
+country--the millennium not having arrived in any--has this been
+achieved? Though voting in England has not always been pure, we have not
+wished to do away with the votes of freemen and to submit everything to
+personal rule. Nor did Cicero.
+
+He knew that much was bad, and had himself seen many things that were
+very evil. He had lived through the dominations of Marius and Sulla, and
+had seen the old practices of Roman government brought down to the
+pretence of traditional forms. But still, so he thought, there was life
+left in the old forms, if they could be revivified by patriotism, labor,
+and intelligence. It was the best that he could imagine for the
+State--infinitely better than the chance of falling into the bloody
+hands of one Marius and one Sulla after another. Mommsen tells us that
+nothing could be more rotten than the condition of oligarchical
+government into which Rome had fallen; and we are inclined to agree with
+Mommsen, because we have seen what followed. But that Cicero, living and
+seeing it all as a present spectator, should have hoped better things,
+should not, I think, cause us to doubt either Cicero's wisdom or his
+patriotism. I cannot but think that, had I been a Roman of those days, I
+should have preferred Cicero, with his memories of the past, to Cęsar,
+with his ambition for the future.
+
+Looking back from our standing-point of to-day, we know how great Rome
+was--infinitely greater, as far as power is concerned, than anything
+else which the world has produced. It came to pass that "Urbis et orbis"
+was not a false boast. Gradually growing from the little nest of robbers
+established on the banks of the Tiber, the people of Rome learned how to
+spread their arms over all the known world, and to conquer and rule,
+while they drew to themselves all that the ingenuity and industry of
+other people had produced. To do this, there must have been not only
+courage and persistence, but intelligence, patriotism, and superior
+excellence in that art of combination of which government consists. But
+yet, when we look back, it is hard to say when were the palmy days of
+Rome. When did those virtues shine by which her power was founded? When
+was that wisdom best exhibited from which came her capacity for ruling?
+Not in the time of her early kings, whose mythic virtues, if they
+existed, were concerned but in small matters; for the Rome of the kings
+claimed a jurisdiction extending as yet but a few miles from the city.
+And from the time of their expulsion, Rome, though she was rising in
+power, was rising slowly, and through such difficulties that the reader
+of history, did he not know the future, would think from time to time
+that the day of her destruction had come upon her. Not when Brennus was
+at Rome with his Gauls, a hundred and twenty-five years after the
+expulsion of the kings, could Rome be said to have been great; nor when,
+fifty or sixty years afterward, the Roman army--the only army which Rome
+then possessed--had to lay down its arms in the Caudine Forks and pass
+under the Samnite yoke. Then, when the Samnite wars were ended, and Rome
+was mistress in Italy--mistress, after all, of no more than Southern
+Italy--the Punic wars began. It could hardly have been during that long
+contest with Carthage, which was carried on for nearly fifty years, that
+the palmy days of Rome were at their best. Hannibal seems always to be
+the master. Trebia, Thrasymene and Cannę, year after year, threaten
+complete destruction to the State. Then comes the great Scipio; and no
+doubt, if we must mark an era of Roman greatness, it would be that of
+the battle of Zama and the submission of Carthage, 201 years before
+Christ. But with Scipio there springs up the idea of personal ambition;
+and in the Macedonian and Greek wars that follow, though the arm of Rome
+is becoming stronger every day, and her shoulders broader, there is
+already the glamour of her decline in virtue. Her dealings with
+Antiochus, with Pyrrhus, and with the Achęans, though successful, were
+hardly glorious. Then came the two Gracchi, and the reader begins to
+doubt whether the glory of the Republic is not already over. They
+demanded impossible reforms, by means as illegal as they were
+impossible, and were both killed in popular riots. The war with Jugurtha
+followed, in which the Romans were for years unsuccessful, and during
+which German hordes from the north rushed into Gaul and destroyed an
+army of 80,000 Romans. This brings us to Marius and to Sulla, of whom we
+have already spoken, and to that period of Roman politics which the
+German historian describes as being open to no judgment "save one of
+inexorable and remorseless condemnation."
+
+But, in truth, the history of every people and every nation will be
+subject to the same criticism, if it be regarded with the same severity.
+In all that man has done as yet in the way of government, the seeds of
+decay are apparent when looked back upon from an age in advance. The
+period of Queen Elizabeth was very great to us; yet by what dangers were
+we enveloped in her days! But for a storm at sea, we might have been
+subjected to Spain. By what a system of falsehood and petty tyrannies
+were we governed through the reigns of James I. and Charles I.! What
+periods of rottenness and danger there have been since! How little
+glorious was the reign of Charles II.! how full of danger that of
+William! how mean those of the four Georges, with the dishonesty of
+ministers such as Walpole and Newcastle! And to-day, are there not many
+who are telling us that we are losing the liberties which our
+forefathers got for us, and that no judgment can be passed on us "save
+one of inexorable and remorseless condemnation?" We are a great nation,
+and the present threatenings are probably vain. Nevertheless, the seeds
+of decay are no doubt inherent in our policies and our practices--so
+manifestly inherent that future historians will pronounce upon them with
+certainty.
+
+But Cicero, not having the advantage of distance, having simply in his
+mind the knowledge of the greatness which had been achieved, and in his
+heart a true love for the country which had achieved it, and which was
+his own, encouraged himself to think that the good might be recovered
+and the bad eliminated. Marius and Sulla--Pompey also, toward the end of
+his career, if I can read his character rightly--Cęsar, and of course
+Augustus, being all destitute of scruple, strove to acquire, each for
+himself, the power which the weak hands of the Senate were unable to
+grasp. However much, or however little, the country of itself might have
+been to any of them, it seemed good to him, whether for the country's
+sake or for his own, that the rule should be in his own hands. Each had
+the opportunity, and each used it, or tried to use it. With Cicero there
+is always present the longing to restore the power to the old
+constitutional possessors of it. So much is admitted, even by his bitter
+enemies; and I am sometimes at a loss whether to wonder most that a man
+of letters, dead two thousand years ago, should have enemies so bitter
+or a friend so keenly in earnest about him as I am. Cicero was aware
+quite as well as any who lived then, if he did not see the matter
+clearer even than any others, that there was much that was rotten in the
+State. Men who had been murderers on behalf of Marius, and then others
+who had murdered on behalf of Sulla--among whom that Catiline, of whom
+we have to speak presently, had been one--were not apt to settle
+themselves down as quiet citizens. The laws had been set aside. Even the
+law courts had been closed. Sulla had been law, and the closets of his
+favorites had been the law courts. Senators had been cowed and obedient.
+The Tribunes had only been mock Tribunes. Rome, when Cicero began his
+public life, was still trembling. The Consuls of the day were men chosen
+at Sulla's command. The army was Sulla's army. The courts were now again
+opened by Sulla's permission. The day fixed by Sulla when murderers
+might no longer murder--or, at any rate, should not be paid for
+murdering--had arrived. There was not, one would say, much hope for good
+things. But Sulla had reproduced the signs of order, and the best hope
+lay in that direction. Consuls, Prętors, Quęstors, Ędiles, even
+Tribunes, were still there. Perhaps it might be given to him, to Cicero,
+to strengthen the hands of such officers. At any rate, there was no
+better course open to him by which he could serve his country.
+
+The heaviest accusation brought against Cicero charges him with being
+insincere to the various men with whom he was brought in contact in
+carrying out the purpose of his life, and he has also been accused of
+having changed his purpose. It has been alleged that, having begun life
+as a democrat, he went over to the aristocracy as soon as he had secured
+his high office of State. As we go on, it will be my object to show that
+he was altogether sincere in his purpose, that he never changed his
+political idea, and that, in these deviations as to men and as to means,
+whether, for instance, he was ready to serve Cęsar or to oppose him, he
+was guided, even in the insincerity of his utterances, by the sincerity
+of his purpose. I think that I can remember, even in Great Britain, even
+in the days of Queen Victoria, men sitting check by jowl on the same
+Treasury bench who have been very bitter to each other with anything but
+friendly words. With us fidelity in friendship is, happily, a virtue. In
+Rome expediency governed everything. All I claim for Cicero is, that he
+was more sincere than others around him.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+_HIS EARLY PLEADINGS.--SEXTUS ROSCIUS AMERINUS.--HIS INCOME._
+
+
+[Sidenote: B.C. 80, ętat. 27.]
+
+We now come to the beginning of the work of Cicero's life. This at first
+consisted in his employment as an advocate, from which he gradually rose
+into public or political occupation, as so often happens with a
+successful barrister in our time. We do not know with absolute certainty
+even in what year Cicero began his pleadings, or in what cause. It may
+probably have been in 81 B.C., when he was twenty-five, or in his
+twenty-sixth year. Of the pleadings of which we know the particulars,
+that in the defence of Sextus Roscius Amerinus, which took place
+undoubtedly in the year 80 B.C., ętat twenty-seven, was probably the
+earliest. As to that, we have his speech nearly entire, as we have also
+one for Publius Quintius, which has generally been printed first among
+the orator's works. It has, however, I think, been made clear that that
+spoken for Sextus Roscius came before it. It is certain that there had
+been others before either of them. In that for Sextus he says that he
+had never spoken before in any public cause,[61] such as was the
+accusation in which he was now engaged, from which the inference has to
+be made that he had been engaged in private causes; and in that for
+Quintius he declares that there was wanting to him in that matter an aid
+which he had been accustomed to enjoy in others.[62] No doubt he had
+tried his 'prentice hand in cases of less importance. That of these two
+the defence of Sextus Roscius came first, is also to be found in his own
+words. More than once, in pleading for Quintius, he speaks of the
+proscriptions and confiscations of Sulla as evils then some time past.
+These were brought nominally to a close in June, 81; but it has been
+supposed by those who have placed this oration first that it was spoken
+in that very year. This seems to have been impossible. "I am most
+unwilling," says he, "to call to mind that subject, the very memory of
+which should be wiped out from our thoughts."[63] When the tone of the
+two speeches is compared, it will become evident that that for Sextus
+Roscius was spoken the first. It was, as I have said, spoken in his
+twenty-seventh year, B.C. 80, the year after the proscription lists had
+been closed, when Sulla was still Dictator, and when the sales of
+confiscated goods, though no longer legal, were still carried on under
+assumed authority. As to such violation of Sulla's own enactment, Cicero
+excuses the Dictator in this very speech, likening him to Great Jove the
+Thunderer. Even "Jupiter Optimus Maximus," as he is whose nod the
+heavens, the earth, and seas obey--even he cannot so look after his
+numerous affairs but that the winds and the storms will be too strong
+sometimes, or the heat too great, or the cold too bitter. If so, how can
+we wonder that Sulla, who has to rule the State, to govern, in fact, the
+world, should not be able himself to see to everything? Jove probably
+found it convenient not to see many things. Such must certainly have
+been the case with Sulla.
+
+I will venture, as other biographers have done before, to tell the story
+of Sextus Roscius of Ameria at some length, because it is in itself a
+tale of powerful romance, mysterious, grim, betraying guilt of the
+deepest dye, misery most profound, and audacity unparalleled; because,
+in a word, it is as interesting as any novel that modern fiction has
+produced; and also, I will tell it, because it lets in a flood of light
+upon the condition of Rome at the time. Our hair is made to stand on end
+when we remember that men had to pick their steps in such a State as
+this, and to live if it were possible, and, if not, then to be ready to
+die. We come in upon the fag-end of the proscription, and see, not the
+bloody wreath of Sulla as he triumphed on his Marian foes, not the cruel
+persecution of the ruler determined to establish his order of things by
+slaughtering every foe, but the necessary accompaniments of such
+ruthless deeds--those attendant villanies for which the Jupiter Optimus
+Maximus of the day had neither ears nor eyes. If in history we can ever
+get a glimpse at the real life of the people, it is always more
+interesting than any account of the great facts, however grand.
+
+The Kalends of June had been fixed by Sulla as the day on which the
+slaughter legalized by the proscriptions should cease. In the September
+following an old gentleman named Sextus Roscius was murdered in the
+streets of Rome as he was going home from supper one night, attended by
+two slaves. By whom he was murdered, probably more than one or two knew
+then, but nobody knows now. He was a man of reputation, well acquainted
+with the Metelluses and Messalas of the day, and passing rich. His name
+had been down on no proscription list, for he had been a friend of
+Sulla's friends. He was supposed, when he was murdered, to be worth
+about six million of sesterces, or something between fifty and sixty
+thousand pounds of our money. Though there was at that time much money
+in Rome, this amounted to wealth; and though we cannot say who murdered
+the man, we may feel sure that he was murdered for his money.
+
+Immediately on his death his chattels were seized and sold--or divided,
+probably, without being sold--including his slaves, in whom, as with
+every rich Roman, much of his wealth was invested; and his landed
+estates--his farms, of which he had many--were also divided. As to the
+actual way in which this was done, we are left much in the dark. Had the
+name of Sextus Roscius been on one of the lists, even though the list
+would then have been out of date, we could have understood that it
+should have been so. Jupiter Optimus Maximus could not see everything,
+and great advantages were taken. We must only suppose that things were
+so much out of order that they who had been accustomed to seize upon the
+goods of the proscribed were able to stretch their hands so as to grasp
+almost anything that came in their way. They could no longer procure a
+rich man's name to be put down on the list, but they could pretend that
+it had been put down. At any rate, certain persons seized and divided
+the chattels of the murdered man as though he had been proscribed.
+
+Old Roscius, when he was killed, had one son, of whom we are told that
+he lived always in the country at Ameria, looking after his father's
+farms, never visiting the capital, which was distant from Ameria
+something under fifty miles; a rough, uncouth, and probably honest
+man--one, at any rate, to whom the ways of the city were unknown, and
+who must have been but partially acquainted with the doings of the
+time.[64] As we read the story, we feel that very much depends on the
+character of this man, and we are aware that our only description of him
+comes from his own advocate. Cicero would probably say much which,
+though beyond the truth, could not be absolutely refuted, but would
+state as facts nothing that was absolutely false. Cicero describes him
+as a middle-aged man, who never left his farm, doing his duty well by
+his father, as whose agent he acted on the land--a simple, unambitious,
+ignorant man, to whom one's sympathies are due rather than our
+antipathy, because of his devotion to agriculture. He was now accused of
+having murdered his father. The accusation was conducted by one Erucius,
+who in his opening speech--the speech made before that by Cicero--had
+evidently spoken ill of rural employments. Then Cicero reminds him, and
+the judges, and the Court how greatly agriculture had been honored in
+the old days, when Consuls were taken from the ploughs. The imagination,
+however, of the reader pictures to itself a man who could hardly have
+been a Consul at any time--one silent, lonely, uncouth, and altogether
+separate from the pleasant intercourses of life. Erucius had declared of
+him that he never took part in any festivity. Cicero uses this to show
+that he was not likely to have been tempted by luxury to violence. Old
+Roscius had had two sons, of whom he had kept one with him in Rome--the
+one, probably, whose society had been dearest to him. He, however, had
+died, and our Roscius--Sextus Roscius Amerinus, as he came to be called
+when he was made famous by the murder--was left on one of the farms down
+in the country. The accusation would probably not have been made, had he
+not been known to be a man sullen, silent, rough, and unpopular--as to
+whom such a murder might be supposed to be credible.
+
+Why should any accusation have been made unless there was clear evidence
+as to guilt? That is the first question which presents itself. This son
+received no benefit from his father's death. He had in fact been
+absolutely beggared by it--had lost the farm, the farming utensils,
+every slave in the place, all of which had belonged to his father, and
+not to himself. They had been taken, and divided; taken by persons
+called "Sectores," informers or sequestrators, who took possession of
+and sold--or did not sell--confiscated goods. Such men in this case had
+pounced down upon the goods of the murdered man at once and swallowed
+them all up, not leaving an acre or a slave to our Roscius. Cicero tells
+us who divided the spoil among them. There were two other Rosciuses,
+distant relatives, probably, both named Titus; Titus Roscius Magnus, who
+sojourned in Rome, and who seems to have exercised the trade of informer
+and assassin during the proscriptions, and Titus Roscius Capito, who,
+when at home, lived at Ameria, but of whom Cicero tells us that he had
+become an apt pupil of the other during this affair. They had got large
+shares, but they shared also with one Chrysogonus, the freedman and
+favorite of Sulla, who did the dirty work for Jupiter Optimus Maximus
+when Jupiter Optimus Maximus had not time to do it himself. We presume
+that Chrysogonus had the greater part of the plunder. As to Capito, the
+apt pupil, we are told again and again that he got three farms for
+himself.
+
+Again, it is necessary to say that all these facts come from Cicero,
+who, in accordance with the authorized practice of barristers, would
+scruple at saying nothing which he found in his instructions. How
+instructions were conveyed to an advocate in those days we do not quite
+know. There was no system of attorneys. But the story was probably made
+out for the "patronus" or advocate by an underling, and in some way
+prepared for him. That which was thus prepared he exaggerated as the
+case might seem to require. It has to be understood of Cicero that he
+possessed great art and, no doubt, great audacity in such exaggeration;
+in regard to which we should certainly not bear very heavily upon him
+now, unless we are prepared to bear more heavily upon those who do the
+same thing in our own enlightened days. But Cicero, even as a young man,
+knew his business much too well to put forward statements which could be
+disproved. The accusation came first; then the speech in defence; after
+that the evidence, which was offered only on the side of the accuser,
+and which was subject to cross-examination. Cicero would have no
+opportunity of producing evidence. He was thus exempted from the
+necessity of proving his statements, but was subject to have them all
+disproved. I think we may take it for granted that the property of the
+murdered man was divided as he tells us.
+
+If that was so, why should any accusation have been made? Our Sextus
+seems to have been too much crushed by the dangers of his position to
+have attempted to get back any part of his father's wealth. He had
+betaken himself to the protection of a certain noble lady, one Metella,
+whose family had been his father's friends, and by her and her friends
+the defence was no doubt managed. "You have my farms," he is made to say
+by his advocate; "I live on the charity of another. I abandon everything
+because I am placid by nature, and because it must be so. My house,
+which is closed to me, is open to you: I endure it. You have possessed
+yourself of my whole establishment; I have not one single slave. I
+suffer all this, and feel that I must suffer it. What do you want more?
+Why do you persecute me further? In what do you think that I shall hurt
+you? How do I interfere with you? In what do I oppose you? Is it your
+wish to kill a man for the sake of plunder? You have your plunder. If
+for the sake of hatred, what hatred can you feel against him of whose
+land you have taken possession before you had even known him?"[65] Of
+all this, which is the advocate's appeal to pity, we may believe as
+little as we please. Cicero is addressing the judge, and desires only an
+acquittal. But the argument shows that no overt act in quest of
+restitution had as yet been made. Nevertheless, Chrysogonus feared such
+action, and had arranged with the two Tituses that something should be
+done to prevent it. What are we to think of the condition of a city in
+which not only could a man be murdered for his wealth walking home from
+supper--that, indeed, might happen in London if there existed the means
+of getting at the man's money when the man was dead--but in which such a
+plot could be concerted in order that the robbery might be consummated?
+"We have murdered the man and taken his money under the false plea that
+his goods had been confiscated. Friends, we find, are interfering--these
+Metellas and Metelluses, probably. There is a son who is the natural
+heir. Let us say that he killed his own father. The courts of law, which
+have only just been reopened since the dear days of proscription,
+disorder, and confiscation, will hardly yet be alert enough to acquit a
+man in opposition to the Dictator's favorite. Let us get him convicted,
+and, as a parricide, sewed up alive in a bag and thrown into the
+river"--as some of us have perhaps seen cats drowned, for such was the
+punishment--"and then he at least will not disturb us." It must have
+thus been that the plot was arranged.
+
+It was a plot so foul that nothing could be fouler; but not the less was
+it carried out persistently with the knowledge and the assistance of
+many. Erucius, the accuser, who seems to have been put forward on the
+part of Chrysogonus, asserted that the man had caused his father to be
+murdered because of hatred. The father was going to disinherit the son,
+and therefore the son murdered the father. In this there might have been
+some probability, had there been any evidence of such an intention on
+the father's part. But there was none. Cicero declares that the father
+had never thought of disinheriting his son. There had been no quarrel,
+no hatred. This had been assumed as a reason--falsely. There was in
+fact no cause for such a deed; nor was it possible that the son should
+have done it. The father was killed in Rome when, as was evident, the
+son was fifty miles off. He never left his farm. Erucius, the accuser,
+had said, and had said truly, that Rome was full of murderers.[66] But
+who was the most likely to have employed such a person: this rough
+husbandman, who had no intercourse with Rome, who knew no one there, who
+knew little of Roman ways, who had nothing to get by the murder when
+committed, or they who had long been concerned with murderers, who knew
+Rome, and who were now found to have the property in their hands?
+
+The two slaves who had been with the old man when he was killed, surely
+they might tell something? Here there comes out incidentally the fact
+that slaves when they were examined as witnesses were tortured, quite as
+a matter of course, so that their evidence might be extracted. This is
+spoken of with no horror by Cicero, nor, as far as I can remember, by
+other Roman writers. It was regarded as an established rule of life that
+a slave, if brought into a court of law, should be made to tell the
+truth by such appliances. This was so common that one is tempted to
+hope, and almost to suppose that the "question" was not ordinarily
+administered with circumstances of extreme cruelty. We hear, indeed, of
+slaves having their liberty given them in order that, being free, they
+may not be forced by torture to tell the truth;[67] but had the cruelty
+been of the nature described by Scott in "Old Mortality," when the poor
+preacher's limbs were mangled, I think we should have heard more of it.
+Nor was the torture always applied, but only when the expected evidence
+was not otherwise forth-coming. Cicero explains, in the little dialogue
+given below, how the thing was carried on.[68] "You had better tell the
+truth now, my friend: Was it so and so?" The slave knows that, if he
+says it was so, there is the cross for him, or the "little horse;" but
+that, if he will say the contrary, he will save his joints from racking.
+And yet the evidence went for what it was worth.
+
+In this case of Roscius there had certainly been two slaves present; but
+Cicero, who, as counsel for the defence, could call no witnesses, had
+not the power to bring them into court; nor could slaves have been made
+to give evidence against their masters. These slaves, who had belonged
+to the murdered man, were now the property either of Chrysogonus or of
+the two Tituses. There was no getting at their evidence but by
+permission of their masters, and this was withheld. Cicero demands that
+they shall be produced, knowing that the demand will have no effect.
+"The man here," he says, pointing to the accused, "asks for it, prays
+for it. What will you do in this case? Why do you refuse?"[69]
+
+By this time the reader is brought to feel that the accused person
+cannot possibly have been guilty; and if the reader, how much more the
+hearer? Then Cicero goes on to show who in truth were guilty. "Doubt now
+if you can, judges, by whom Roscius was killed: whether by him who, by
+his father's death, is plunged into poverty and trouble--who is
+forbidden even to investigate the truth--or by those who are afraid of
+real evidence, who themselves possess the plunder, who live in the midst
+of murder, and on the proceeds of murder."[70]
+
+Then he addresses one of the Tituses, Titus Magnus, who seems to have
+been sitting in the court, and who is rebuked for his impudence in doing
+so: "Who can doubt who was the murderer--you who have got all the
+plunder, or this man who has lost everything? But if it be added to this
+that you were a pauper before--that you have been known as a greedy
+fellow, as a dare-devil, as the avowed enemy of him who has been
+killed--then need one ask what has brought you to do such a deed as
+this?"[71]
+
+He next tells what took place, as far as it was known, immediately after
+the murder. The man had been killed coming home from supper, in
+September, after it was dark, say at eight or nine o'clock, and the fact
+was known in Ameria before dawn. Travelling was not then very quick; but
+a messenger, one Mallius Glaucia, a man on very close terms with Titus
+Magnus, was sent down at once in a light gig to travel through the night
+and take the information to Titus Capito Why was all this hurry? How did
+Glaucia hear of the murder so quickly? What cause to travel all through
+the night? Why was it necessary that Capito should know all about it at
+once? "I cannot think," says Cicero, "only that I see that Capito has
+got three of the farms out of the thirteen which the murdered man
+owned!" But Capito is to be produced as a witness, and Cicero gives us
+to understand what sort of cross-examination he will have to undergo.
+
+In all this the reader has to imagine much, and to come to conclusions
+as to facts of which he has no evidence. When that hurried messenger was
+sent, there was probably no idea of accusing the son. The two real
+contrivers of the murder would have been more on their guard had they
+intended such a course. It had been conceived that when the man was dead
+and his goods seized, the fear of Sulla's favorite, the still customary
+dread of the horrors of the time, would cause the son to shrink from
+inquiry. Hitherto, when men had been killed and their goods taken, even
+if the killing and the taking had not been done strictly in accordance
+with Sulla's ordinance, it had been found safer to be silent and to
+endure; but this poor wretch, Sextus, had friends in Rome--friends who
+were friends of Sulla--of whom Chrysogonus and the Tituses had probably
+not bethought themselves. When it came to pass that more stir was made
+than they had expected, then the accusation became necessary.
+
+But, in order to obtain the needed official support and aid, Chrysogonus
+must be sought. Sulla was then at Volaterra, in Etruria perhaps 150
+miles north-west from Rome, and with him was his favorite Chrysogonus.
+In four days from the time of this murder the news was earned thither,
+and, so Cicero states, by the same messenger--by Glaucia--who had taken
+it to Ameria. Chrysogonus immediately saw to the selling of the goods,
+and from this Cicero implies that Chrysogonus and the two Tituses were
+in partnership.
+
+But it seems that when the fact of the death of old Roscius was known at
+Ameria--at which place he was an occasional resident himself, and the
+most conspicuous man in the place--the inhabitants, struck with horror,
+determined to send a deputation to Sulla. Something of what was being
+done with their townsman's property was probably known, and there seems
+to have been a desire for justice. Ten townsmen were chosen to go to
+Sulla, and to beg that he would personally look into the matter. Here,
+again, we are very much in the dark, because this very Capito, to whom
+these farms were allotted as his share, was not only chosen to be one of
+the ten, but actually became their spokesman and their manager. The
+great object was to keep Sulla himself in the dark, and this Capito
+managed to do by the aid of Chrysogonus. None of the ten were allowed to
+see Sulla. They are hoaxed into believing that Chrysogonus himself will
+look to it, and so they go back to Ameria, having achieved nothing. We
+are tempted to believe that the deputation was a false deputation, each
+of whom probably had his little share, so that in this way there might
+be an appearance of justice. If it was so, Cicero has not chosen to tell
+that part of the story, having, no doubt, some good advocate's reason
+for omitting it.
+
+So far the matter had gone with the Tituses, and with Chrysogonus who
+had got his lion's share. Our poor Roscius, the victim, did at first
+abandon his property, and allow himself to be awed into silence. We
+cannot but think that he was a poor creature, and can fancy that he had
+lived a wretched life during all the murders of the Sullan
+proscriptions. But in his abject misery he had found his way up among
+the great friends of his family at Rome, and had there been charged with
+the parricide, because Chrysogonus and the Tituses began to be afraid of
+what these great friends might do.
+
+This is the story as Cicero has been able to tell it in his speech.
+Beyond that, we only know that the man was acquitted. Whether he got
+back part of his father's property there is nothing to inform us.
+Whether further inquiry was made as to the murder; whether evil befell
+those two Tituses or Chrysogonus was made to disgorge, there has been no
+one to inform us. The matter was of little importance in Rome, where
+murders and organized robberies of the kind were the common incidents of
+every-day life. History would have meddled with nothing so ordinary had
+not it happened that the case fell into the hands of a man so great a
+master of his language that it has been worth the while of ages to
+perpetuate the speech which he made in the matter. But the story, as a
+story of Roman life, is interesting, and it gives a slight aid to
+history in explaining the condition of things which Sulla had produced.
+
+The attack upon Chrysogonus is bold, and cannot but have been offensive
+to Sulla, though Sulla is by name absolved from immediate blame.
+Chrysogonus himself, the favorite, he does not spare, saying words so
+bitter of tone that one would think that the judges--Sulla's
+judges--would have stopped him, had they been able. "Putting aside
+Sextus Roscius," he says, "I demand, first of all, why the goods of an
+esteemed citizen were sold; then, why have the goods been sold of one
+who had not himself been proscribed, and who had not been killed while
+defending Sulla's enemies? It is against those only that the law is
+made. Then I demand why they were sold when the legal day for such sales
+had passed, and why they were sold for such a trifle."[72] Then he gives
+us a picture of Chrysogonus flaunting down the streets. "You have seen
+him, judges, how, his locks combed and perfumed, he swims along the
+Forum"--he, a freedman, with a crowd of Roman citizens at his heels,
+that all may see that he thinks himself inferior to none--"the only
+happy man of the day, the only one with any power in his hands."[73]
+
+This trial was, as has been said, a "causa publica," a criminal
+accusation of such importance as to demand that it should be tried
+before a full bench of judges. Of these the number would be uncertain,
+but they were probably above fifty. The Prętor of the day--the Prętor to
+whom by lot had fallen for that year that peculiar duty--presided, and
+the judges all sat round him. Their duty seems to have consisted in
+listening to the pleadings, and then in voting. Each judge could
+vote[74] "guilty," "acquitted," or "not proven," as they do in Scotland.
+They were, in fact, jurymen rather than judges. It does not seem that
+any amount of legal lore was looked for specially in the judges, who at
+different periods had been taken from various orders of the citizens,
+but who at this moment, by a special law enacted by Sulla, were selected
+only from the Senators. We have ample evidence that at this period the
+judges in Rome were most corrupt. They were tainted by a double
+corruption: that of standing by their order instead of standing by the
+public--each man among them feeling that his turn to be accused might
+come--and that also of taking direct bribes. Cicero on various
+occasions--on this, for instance, and notably in the trial of Verres, to
+which we shall come soon--felt very strongly that his only means of
+getting a true verdict from the majority of judges was to frighten them
+into temporary honesty by the magnitude of the occasion. If a trial
+could be slurred through with indifferent advocates, with nothing to
+create public notice, with no efforts of genius to attract admiration,
+and a large attendance and consequent sympathy the judgment would, as a
+matter of course, be bought. In such a case as this of Sextus Roscius,
+the poor wretch would be condemned, sewed up in his bag, and thrown into
+the sea, a portion of the plunder would be divided among the judges, and
+nothing further would be said about it. But if an orator could achieve
+for himself such a reputation that the world would come and listen to
+him, if he could so speak that Rome should be made to talk about the
+trial, then might the judges be frightened into a true verdict. It may
+be understood, therefore, of what importance it was to obtain the
+services of a Cicero, or of a Hortensius, who was unrivalled at the
+Roman bar when Cicero began to plead.
+
+There were three special modes of oratory in which Cicero displayed his
+powers. He spoke either before the judges--a large body of judges who
+sat collected round the Prętor, as in the case of Sextus Roscius--or in
+cases of civil law before a single judge, selected by the Prętor, who
+sat with an assessor, as in the case of Roscius the actor, which shall
+be mentioned just now. This was the recognized work of his life, in
+which he was engaged, at any rate, in his earlier years; or he spoke to
+the populace, in what was called the Concio, or assembly of the
+people--speeches made before a crowd called together for a special
+purpose, as were the second and third orations against Catiline; or in
+the Senate, in which a political rather than a judicial sentence was
+sought from the votes of the Senators. There was a fourth mode of
+address, which in the days of the Emperors became common, when the
+advocate spoke "ad Principem;" that is, to the Emperor himself, or to
+some ruler acting for him as sole judge. It was thus that Cicero pleaded
+before Cęsar for Ligarius and for King Deiotarus, in the latter years of
+his life. In each of these a separate manner and a distinct line had to
+be adopted, in all of which he seems to have been equally happy, and
+equally powerful. In judging of his speeches, we are bound to remember
+that they were not probably uttered with their words arranged as we read
+them. Some of those we have were never spoken at all, as was the case
+with the five last Verrene orations, and with the second, by far the
+longest of the Philippics. Some, as was specially the case with the
+defence of Milo, the language of which is perhaps as perfect as that of
+any oration which has reached us from ancient or modern days, were only
+spoken in part; so that that which we read bears but small relation to
+that which was heard. All were probably retouched for publication.[75]
+That words so perfect in their construction should have flowed from a
+man's mouth, often with but little preparation, we cannot conceive. But
+we know from the evidence of the day, and from the character which
+remained of him through after Roman ages, how great was the immediate
+effect of his oratory. We can imagine him, in this case of Sextus
+Roscius, standing out in the open air in the Forum, with the movable
+furniture of the court around him, the seats on which the judges sat
+with the Prętor in the midst of them, all Senators in their white robes,
+with broad purple borders. There too were seated, we may suppose on
+lower benches, the friends of the accused and the supporters of the
+accusation, and around, at the back of the orator, was such a crowd as
+he by the character of his eloquence may have drawn to the spot. Cicero
+was still a young man; but his name had made itself known and we can
+imagine that some tidings had got abroad as to the bold words which
+would be spoken in reference to Sulla and Chrysogonus. The scene must
+have been very different from that of one of our dingy courts, in which
+the ermine is made splendid only by the purity and learning of the man
+who wears it. In Rome all exterior gifts were there. Cicero knew how to
+use them, so that the judges who made so large a part in the pageant
+should not dare to disgrace themselves because of its publicity.
+Quintilian gives his pupils much advice as to the way in which they
+should dress themselves[76] and hold their togas--changing the folds of
+the garment so as to suit the different parts of the speech--how they
+should move their arms, and hold their heads, and turn their necks; even
+how they should comb their hair when they came to stand in public and
+plead at the bar. All these arts, with many changes, no doubt, as years
+rolled on, had come down to him from days before Cicero; but he always
+refers to Cicero as though his were the palmy days of Roman eloquence.
+We can well believe that Cicero had studied many of these arts by his
+twenty-seventh year--that he knew how to hold his toga and how to drop
+it--how to make the proper angle with his elbow--how to comb his hair,
+and yet not be a fop--and to add to the glory of his voice all the
+personal graces which were at his command.
+
+Sextus Roscius Amerinus, with all his misfortunes, injustices, and
+miseries, is now to us no more than the name of a fable; but to those
+who know it, the fable is, I think, more attractive than most novels.
+
+We know that Cicero pleaded other causes before he went to Greece in the
+year 79 B.C., especially those for Publius Quintius, of which we have
+his speech, and that for a lady of Arretium, in which he defended her
+right to be regarded as a free woman of that city. In this speech he
+again attacked Sulla, the rights of the lady in question having been
+placed in jeopardy by an enactment made by the Dictator; and again
+Cicero was successful. This is not extant. Then he started on his
+travels, as to which I have already spoken. While he was absent Sulla
+died, and the condition of the Republic during his absence was anything
+but hopeful. Lepidus was Consul during these two years, than whom no
+weaker officer ever held rule in Rome--or rebelled against Rome; and
+Sertorius, who was in truth a great man, was in arms against Rome in
+Spain, as a rebel, though he was in truth struggling to create a new
+Roman power, which should be purer than that existing in Italy. What
+Cicero thought of the condition of his country at this time we have no
+means of knowing. If he then wrote letters, they have not been
+preserved. His spoken words speak plainly enough of the condition of the
+courts of law, and let us know how resolved he was to oppose himself to
+their iniquities. A young man may devote himself to politics with as
+much ardor as a senior, but he cannot do so if he be intent on a
+profession. It is only when his business is so well grasped by him as to
+sit easily on him, that he is able to undertake the second occupation.
+
+There is a rumor that Cicero, when he returned home from Greece, thought
+for awhile of giving himself up to philosophy, so that he was called
+Greek and Sophist in ridicule. It is not, however, to be believed that
+he ever for a moment abandoned the purpose he had formed for his own
+career. It will become evident as we go on with his life, that this
+so-called philosophy of the Greeks was never to him a matter of more
+than interesting inquiry. A full, active, human life, in which he might
+achieve for himself all the charms of high rank, gilded by intelligence,
+erudition, and refined luxury, in which also he might serve his country,
+his order, and his friends--just such a life as our leading men propose
+to themselves here, to-day, in our country--this is what Cicero had
+determined to achieve from his earliest years, and it was not likely
+that he should be turned from it by the pseudo logic of Greek
+philosophers. That the logic even of the Academy was false to him we
+have ample evidence, not only in his life but in his writings. There is
+a story that, during his travels, he consulted the oracle at Delphi as
+to his future career, and that on being told that he must look to his
+own genius and not to the opinion of the world at large, he determined
+to abandon the honors of the Republic. That he should have talked among
+the young men of the day of his philosophic investigations till they
+laughed at him and gave him a nickname, may be probable, but it cannot
+have been that he ever thought of giving up the bar.
+
+In the year of his return to Rome, when he was thirty, he married
+Terentia, a noble lady, of whom we are informed that she had a good
+fortune, and that her sister was one of the Vestal Virgins.[77] Her
+nobility is inferred from the fact that the virgins were, as a rule,
+chosen from the noble families, though the law required only that they
+should be the daughters of free parents, and of persons engaged in no
+mean pursuits. As to the more important question of Terentia's fortune
+there has never been a doubt. Plutarch, however, does not make it out to
+have been very great, assuming a sum which was equal to about £4200 of
+our money. He tells us at the same time that Cicero's own fortune was
+less than £4000. But in both of these statements, Plutarch, who was
+forced to take his facts where he could get them, and was not very
+particular in his authority, probably erred. The early education of
+Cicero, and the care taken to provide him with all that money could
+purchase, is, I think, conclusive of his father's wealth; and the mode
+of life adopted by Cicero shows that at no period did he think it
+necessary to live as men do live with small incomes.
+
+We shall find, as we go on, that he spent his money freely, as men did
+at Rome who had the command of large means. We are aware that he was
+often in debt. We find that from his letters. But he owed money not as a
+needy man does, but as one who is speculative, sanguine, and quite
+confident of his own resources. The management of incomes was not so
+fixed a thing then as it is with us now. Speculation was even more
+rampant, and rising men were willing and were able to become indebted
+for enormous sums, having no security to offer but the promise of their
+future career. Cęsar's debts during various times of his life were
+proverbial. He is said to have owed over £300,000 before he reached his
+first step in the public employment. Cicero rushed into no such danger
+as this. We know, indeed, that when the time came to him for public
+expenditure on a great scale, as, for instance, when he was filling the
+office of Ędile, he kept within bounds, and he did not lavish money
+which he did not possess. We know also that he refrained, altogether
+refrained, from the iniquitous habits of making large fortunes which
+were open to the great politicians of the Republic. To be Quęstor that
+he might be Ędile, Ędile that he might be Prętor and Consul, and Prętor
+and Consul that he might rob a province--pillage Sicily, Spain, or Asia,
+and then at last come back a rich man, rich enough to cope with all his
+creditors, and to bribe the judges should he be accused for his
+misdeeds--these were the usual steps to take by enterprising Romans
+toward power, wealth, and enjoyment. But it will be observed, in this
+sequence of circumstances, the robbery of the province was essential to
+success. This was sometimes done after so magnificent a fashion as to
+have become an immortal fact in history. The instance of Verres will be
+narrated in the next chapter but one. Something of moderation was more
+general, so that the fleeced provincial might still live, and prefer
+sufferance to the doubtful chances of recovery. A Proconsul might rob a
+great deal, and still return with hands apparently clean, bringing with
+him a score of provincial Deputies to laud his goodness before the
+citizens at home. But Cicero robbed not at all. Even they who have been
+most hard upon his name, accusing him of insincerity and sometimes of
+want of patriotism, because his Roman mode of declaring himself without
+reserve in his letters has been perpetuated for us by the excellence of
+their language, even they have acknowledged that he kept his hands
+studiously clean in the service of his country, when to have clean hands
+was so peculiar as to be regarded as absurd.
+
+There were other means in which a noble Roman might make money, and
+might do so without leaving the city. An orator might be paid for his
+services as an advocate. Cicero, had such a trade been opened to him,
+might have made almost any sum to which his imagination could have
+stretched itself. Such a trade was carried on to a very great extent. It
+was illegal, such payment having been forbidden by the "Lex Cincia De
+Muneribus," passed more than a century before Cicero began his
+pleadings.[78] But the law had become a dead letter in the majority of
+cases. There can be no doubt that Hortensius, the predecessor and great
+rival of Cicero, took presents, if not absolute payment. Indeed, the
+myth of honorary work, which is in itself absurd, was no more
+practicable in Rome than it has been found to be in England, where every
+barrister is theoretically presumed to work for nothing. That the "Lex
+Cincia," as far as the payment of advocates went, was absurd, may be
+allowed by us all. Services for which no regular payment can be exacted
+will always cost more than those which have a defined price. But Cicero
+would not break the law. It has been hinted rather than stated that he,
+like other orators of the day, had his price. He himself tells us that
+he took nothing; and no instance has been adduced that he had ever done
+so. He is free enough in accusing Hortensius of having accepted a
+beautiful statuette, an ivory sphinx of great value. What he knew of
+Hortensius, Hortensius would have known of him, had it been there to
+know; and what Hortensius or others had heard would certainly have been
+told. As far as we can learn, there is no ground for accusing Cicero of
+taking fees or presents beyond the probability that he would do so. I
+think we are justified in believing that he did not do so, because those
+who watched his conduct closely found no opportunity of exposing him.
+That he was paid by different allied States for undertaking their
+protection in the Senate, is probable, such having been a custom not
+illegal. We know that he was specially charged with the affairs of
+Dyrrachium, and had probably amicable relations with other allied
+communities. This, however, must have been later in life, when his name
+was sufficiently high to insure the value of his services, and when he
+was a Senator.
+
+Noble Romans also--noble as they were, and infinitely superior to the
+little cares of trade--were accustomed to traffic very largely in usury.
+We shall have a terrible example of such baseness on the part of
+Brutus--that Brutus whom we have been taught to regard as almost on a
+par with Cato in purity. To lend money to citizens, or more profitably
+to allied States and cities, at enormous rates of interest, was the
+ordinary resource of a Roman nobleman in quest of revenue. The allied
+city, when absolutely eaten to the bone by one noble Roman, who had
+plundered it as Proconsul or Governor, would escape from its immediate
+embarrassment by borrowing money from another noble Roman, who would
+then grind its very bones in exacting his interest and his principal.
+Cicero, in the most perfect of his works--the treatise De Officiis, an
+essay in which he instructs his son as to the way in which a man should
+endeavor to live so as to be a gentleman--inveighs both against trade
+and usury. When he tells us that they are to be accounted mean who buy
+in order that they may sell, we, with our later lights, do not quite
+agree with him, although he founds his assertion on an idea which is too
+often supported by the world's practice, namely, that men cannot do a
+retail business profitably without lying.[79] The doctrine, however, has
+always been common that retail trade is not compatible with noble
+bearing, and was practised by all Romans who aspired to be considered
+among the upper classes. That other and certainly baser means of making
+money by usury was, however, only too common. Crassus, the noted rich
+man of Rome in Cęsar's day, who was one of the first Triumvirate, and
+who perished ignominiously in Parthia, was known to have gathered much
+of his wealth by such means. But against this Cicero is as staunchly
+severe as against shopkeeping. "First of all," he says, "these profits
+are despicable which incur the hatred of men, such as those of gatherers
+of custom and lenders of money on usury."[80]
+
+Again, we are entitled to say that Cicero did not condescend to enrich
+himself by the means which he himself condemns, because, had he done so,
+the accusations made against him by his contemporaries would have
+reached our ears. Nor is it probable that a man in addressing his son as
+to rules of life would have spoken against a method of gathering riches
+which, had he practised it himself, must have been known to his son. His
+rules were severe as compared with the habits of the time. His dear
+friend Atticus did not so govern his conduct, or Brutus, who, when he
+wrote the De Officiis, was only less dear to him than Atticus. But
+Cicero himself seems to have done so faithfully. We learn from his
+letter that he owned house-property in Rome to a considerable extent,
+having probably thus invested his own money or that of his wife. He
+inherited also the family house at Arpinum. He makes it a matter for
+boasting that he had received in the course of his life by legacies
+nearly £200,000 (twenty million sesterces), in itself a source of great
+income, and one common with Romans of high position.[81] Of the extent
+of his income it is impossible to speak, or even make a guess. But we do
+know that he lived always as a rich man--as one who regards such a
+condition of life as essentially proper to him; and that though he was
+often in debt, as was customary with noble Romans, he could always write
+about his debts in a vein of pleasantry, showing that they were not a
+heavy burden to him; and we know that he could at all times command for
+himself villas, books, statues, ornaments, columns, galleries, charming
+shades, and all the delicious appendages of mingled wealth and
+intelligence. He was as might be some English marquis, who, though up to
+his eyes in mortgages, is quite sure that he will never want any of the
+luxuries befitting a marquis. Though we have no authority to tell us how
+his condition of life became what it was, it is necessary that we should
+understand that condition if we are to get a clear insight into his
+life. Of that condition we have ample evidence. He commenced his career
+as a youth upon whose behalf nothing was spared, and when he settled
+himself in Rome, with the purport of winning for himself the highest
+honors of the Republic, he did so with the means of living like a
+nobleman.
+
+But the point on which it is most necessary to insist is this: that
+while so many--I may almost say all around him in his own order--were
+unscrupulous as to their means of getting money, he kept his hands
+clean. The practice then was much as it is now. A gentleman in our days
+is supposed to have his hands clean; but there has got abroad among us a
+feeling that, only let a man rise high enough, soil will not stick to
+him. To rob is base; but if you rob enough, robbery will become heroism,
+or, at any rate, magnificence. With Cęsar his debts have been accounted
+happy audacity; his pillage of Gaul and Spain, and of Rome also, have
+indicated only the success of the great General; his cruelty, which in
+cold-blooded efficiency has equalled if not exceeded the
+blood-thirstiness of any other tyrant, has been called clemency.[82] I
+do not mean to draw a parallel between Cęsar and Cicero. No two men
+could have been more different in their natures or in their career. But
+the one has been lauded because he was unscrupulous, and the other has
+incurred reproach because, at every turn and twist in his life, scruples
+dominated him. I do not say that he always did what he thought to be
+right. A man who doubts much can never do that. The thing that was right
+to him in the thinking became wrong to him in the doing. That from which
+he has shrunk as evil when it was within his grasp, takes the color of
+good when it has been beyond his reach. Cicero had not the stuff in him
+to rule the Rome and the Romans of his period; but he was a man whose
+hands were free from all stain, either of blood or money; and for so
+much let him, at any rate, have the credit.
+
+Between the return of Cicero to Rome in 77 B.C. and his election as
+Quęstor in 75, in which period he married Terentia, he made various
+speeches in different causes, of which only one remains to us, or
+rather, a small part of one. This is notable as having been spoken in
+behalf of that Roscius, the great comic actor, whose name has become
+familiar to us on account of his excellence, almost as have those of
+Garrick, of Siddons, and of Talma. It was a pleading as to the value of
+a slave, and the amount of pecuniary responsibility attaching to Roscius
+on account of the slave, who had been murdered when in his charge. As to
+the murder, no question is made. The slave was valuable, and the injury
+done to his master was a matter of importance. He, having been a slave,
+could have no stronger a claim for an injury done to himself than would
+a dog or a horse. The slave, whose name was Panurge--a name which has
+since been made famous as having been borrowed by Rabelais, probably
+from this occurrence, and given to his demon of mischief--showed
+aptitude for acting, and was therefore valuable. Then one Flavius killed
+him; why or how we do not know; and, having killed him, settled with
+Roscius for the injury by giving him a small farm. But Roscius had only
+borrowed or hired the man from one Chęrea--or was in partnership with
+Chęrea as to the man--and on that account paid something out of the
+value of the farm for the loss incurred; but the owner was not
+satisfied, and after a lapse of time made a further claim. Hence arose
+the action, in pleading which Cicero was successful. In the fragment we
+have of the speech there is nothing remarkable except the studied
+clearness of the language; but it reminds us of the opinion which Cicero
+had expressed of this actor in the oration which he made for Publius
+Quintius, who was the brother-in-law of Roscius. "He is such an actor,"
+says Cicero, "that there is none other on the stage worthy to be seen;
+and such a man that among men he is the last that should have become an
+actor."[83] The orator's praise of the actor is not of much importance.
+Had not Roscius been great in his profession, his name would not have
+come down to later ages. Nor is it now matter of great interest that the
+actor should have been highly praised as a man by his advocate; but it
+is something for us to know that the stage was generally held in such
+low repute as to make it seem to be a pity that a good man should have
+taken himself to such a calling.
+
+In the year 76 B.C. Cicero became father of a daughter, whom we shall
+know as Tullia--who, as she grew up, became the one person whom he loved
+best in all the world--and was elected Quęstor. Cicero tells us of
+himself that in the preceding year he had solicited the Quęstorship,
+when Cotta was candidate for the Consulship and Hortensius for the
+Prętorship. There are in the dialogue De Claris Oratoribus--which has
+had the name of Brutus always given to it--some passages in which the
+orator tells us more of himself than in any other of his works. I will
+annex a translation of a small portion because of its intrinsic
+interest; but I will relegate it to an appendix, because it is too long
+either for insertion in the text or for a note.[84]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+_CICERO AS QUĘSTOR._
+
+
+Cicero was elected Quęstor in his thirtieth year, B.C. 76. He was then
+nearly thirty-one. His predecessors and rivals at the bar, Cotta and
+Hortensius, were elected Consul and Prętor, respectively, in the same
+year. To become Quęstor at the earliest age allowed by the law (at
+thirty-one, namely) was the ambition of the Roman advocate who purposed
+to make his fortune by serving the State. To act as Quęstor in his
+thirty-second year, Ędile in his thirty-seventh, Prętor in his
+forty-first, and Consul in his forty-fourth year, was to achieve, in the
+earliest succession allowed by law, all the great offices of trust,
+power, and future emolument. The great reward of proconsular rapine did
+not generally come till after the last step, though there were notable
+instances in which a Proprętor with proconsular authority could make a
+large fortune, as we shall learn when we come to deal with Verres, and
+though Ędiles, and even Quęstors, could find pickings. It was therefore
+a great thing for a man to begin as early as the law would permit, and
+to lose as few years as possible in reaching the summit. Cicero lost
+none. As he himself tells us in the passage to which I have referred in
+the last chapter, and which is to be found in the Appendix, he gained
+the good-will of men--that is, of free Romans who had the suffrage, and
+who could therefore vote either for him or against him--by the assiduity
+of his attention to the cases which he undertook, and by a certain
+brilliancy of speech which was new to them.[85] Putting his hand
+strenuously to the plough, allowing himself to be diverted by none of
+those luxuries to which Romans of his day were so wont to give way, he
+earned his purpose by a resolution to do his very best. He was "Novus
+Homo"--a man, that is, belonging to a family of which no member had as
+yet filled high office in the State. Against such there was a strong
+prejudice with the aristocracy, who did not like to see the good things
+of the Republic dispersed among an increased number of hands. The power
+of voting was common to all Roman male citizens; but the power of
+influencing the electors had passed very much into the hands of the
+rich. The admiration which Cicero had determined to elicit would not go
+very far, unless it could be produced in a very high degree. A Verres
+could get himself made Prętor; a Lepidus some years since could receive
+the Consulship; or now an Antony, or almost a Catiline. The candidate
+would borrow money on the security of his own audacity, and would thus
+succeed--perhaps with some minor gifts of eloquence, if he could achieve
+them. With all this, the borrowing and the spending of money, that is,
+with direct bribery, Cicero would have nothing to do; but of the art of
+canvassing--that art by which he could at the moment make himself
+beloved by the citizens who had a vote to give--he was a profound
+master.
+
+There is a short treatise, De Petitione Consulatus, on canvassing for
+the Consulship, of which mention may be made here, because all the
+tricks of the trade were as essential to him, when looking to be
+Quęstor, as when he afterward desired to be Consul, and because the
+political doings of his life will hurry us on too quickly in the days of
+his Consulship to admit of our referring to these lessons. This little
+piece, of which we have only a fragment, is supposed to have been
+addressed to Cicero by his brother Quintus, giving fraternal advice as
+to the then coming great occasion. The critics say that it was retouched
+by the orator himself. The reader who has studied Cicero's style will
+think that the retouching went to a great extent, or that the two
+brothers were very like each other in their power of expression.
+
+The first piece of advice was no doubt always in Cicero's mind, not only
+when he looked for office, but whenever he addressed a meeting of his
+fellow-citizens. "Bethink yourself what is this Republic; what it is you
+seek to be in it, and who you are that seek it. As you go down daily to
+the Forum, turn the answer to this in your mind: 'Novus sum; consulatum
+peto; Roma est'--'I am a man of an untried family. It is the Consulship
+that I seek. It is Rome in which I seek it.'" Though the condition of
+Rome was bad, still to him the Republic was the greatest thing in the
+world, and to be Consul in that Republic the highest honor which the
+world could give.
+
+There is nobility in that, but there is very much that is ignoble in the
+means of canvassing which are advocated. I cannot say that they are as
+yet too ignoble for our modern use here in England, but they are too
+ignoble to be acknowledged by our candidates themselves, or by their
+brothers on their behalf. Cicero, not having progressed far enough in
+modern civilization to have studied the beauty of truth, is held to be
+false and hypocritical. We who know so much more than he did, and have
+the doctrine of truth at our fingers' ends, are wise enough to declare
+nothing of our own shortcomings, but to attribute such malpractices only
+to others. "It is a good thing to be thought worthy of the rank we seek
+by those who are in possession of it." Make yourself out to be an
+aristocrat, he means. "Canvass them, and cotton to them. Make them
+believe that in matters of politics you have always been with the
+aristocracy, never with the mob;" that if "you have at all spoken a word
+in public to tickle the people, you have done so for the sake of gaining
+Pompey." As to this, it is necessary to understand Pompey's peculiar
+popularity at the moment, both with the Liberals and with the
+Conservatives. "Above all, see that you have with you the 'jeunesse
+dorée.' They carry so much! There are many with you already. Take care
+that they shall know how much you think of them."
+
+He is especially desired to make known to the public the iniquities of
+Catiline, his opponent, as to whom Quintus says that, though he has
+lately been acquitted in regard to his speculations in Africa, he has
+had to bribe the judges so highly that he is now as poor as they were
+before they got their plunder. At every word we read we are tempted to
+agree with Mommsen that on the Roman oligarchy of the period no judgment
+can be passed save one, "of inexorable condemnation."[86]
+
+"Remember," says Quintus, "that your candidature is very strong in that
+kind of friendship which has been created by your pleadings. Take care
+that each of those friends shall know what special business is allotted
+to him on the occasion; and as you have not troubled any of them yet,
+make them understand that you have reserved for the present moment the
+payment of their debts." This is all very well; but the next direction
+mingles so much of business with its truth, that no one but Machiavelli
+or Quintus Cicero could have expressed it in words. "Men," says Quintus,
+"are induced to struggle for us in these canvassings by three
+motives--by memory of kindness done, by the hope of kindness to come,
+and by community of political conviction. You must see how you are to
+catch each of these. Small favors will induce a man to canvass for you;
+and they who owe their safety to your pleadings, for there are many
+such, are aware that if they do not stand by you now they will be
+regarded by all the world as sorry fellows. Nevertheless, they should be
+made to feel that, as they are indebted to you, you will be glad to have
+an opportunity of becoming indebted to them. But as to those on whom you
+have a hold only by hope--a class of men very much more numerous, and
+likely to be very much more active--they are the men whom you should
+make to understand that your assistance will be always at their
+command."
+
+How severe, how difficult was the work of canvassing in Rome, we learn
+from these lessons. It was the very essence of a great Roman's life that
+he should live in public; and to such an extent was this carried that we
+wonder how such a man as Cicero found time for the real work of his
+life. The Roman patron was expected to have a levee every morning early
+in his own house, and was wont, when he went down into the Forum, to be
+attended by a crowd of parasites. This had become so much a matter of
+course that a public man would have felt himself deserted had he been
+left alone either at home or abroad. Rome was full of idlers--of men who
+got their bread by the favors of the great, who lounged through their
+lives--political quidnuncs, who made canvassing a trade--men without a
+conviction, but who believed in the ascendency of this or the other
+leader, and were ready to fawn or to fight in the streets, as there
+might be need. These were the Quirites of the day--men who were in truth
+fattened on the leavings of the plunder which was extracted from the
+allies; for it was the case now that a Roman was content to live on the
+industry of those whom his father had conquered. They would still fight
+in the legions; but the work of Rome was done by slaves, and the wealth
+of Rome was robbed from the Provinces. Hence it came about that there
+was a numerous class, to whom the name "assectatores" was given, who of
+course became specially prominent at elections. Quintus divides all such
+followers into three kinds, and gives instructions as to the special
+treatment to be applied to each. "There are those who come to pay their
+respects to you at your own house"--"Salutatores" they were called;
+"then those who go down with you into the Forum"--"Deductores;" "and
+after these the third, the class of constant followers"--"Assectatores,"
+as they were specially named. "As to the first, who are the least in
+consequence, and who, according to our present ways of living, come in
+great numbers, you should take care to let them know that their doing
+even so much as this is much esteemed by you. Let them perceive that you
+note it when they come, and say as much to their friends, who will
+repeat your words. Tell themselves often if it be possible. In this way
+men, when there are many candidates, will observe that there is one who
+has his eyes open to these courtesies, and they will give themselves
+heart and soul to him, neglecting all others. And mind you, when you
+find that a man does but pretend, do not let him perceive that you have
+perceived it. Should any one wish to excuse himself, thinking that he is
+suspected of indifference, swear that you have never doubted him, nor
+had occasion to doubt.
+
+"As to the work of the 'Deductores,' who go out with you--as it is much
+more severe than that of those who merely come to pay their compliments,
+let them understand that you feel it to be so, and, as far as possible,
+be ready to go into town with them at fixed hours." Quintus here means
+that the "Deductores" are not to be kept waiting for the patron longer
+than can be helped. "The attendance of a daily crowd in taking you down
+to the Forum gives a great show of character and dignity.
+
+"Then come the band of followers which accompanies you diligently
+wherever you go. As to those who do this without special obligation,
+take care that they should know how much you think of them. From those
+who owe it to you as a duty, exact it rigorously. See that they who can
+come themselves do come themselves, and that they who cannot, send
+others in their places." What an idea does this give as to the labor of
+a candidate in Rome! I can imagine it to be worse even than the
+canvassing of an English borough, which to a man of spirit and honor is
+the most degrading of all existing employments not held to be absolutely
+disgraceful.
+
+Quintus then goes on from the special management of friends to the
+general work of canvassing. "It requires the remembering of men's
+names"--"nomenclationem," a happy word we do not possess--"flattery,
+diligence, sweetness of temper, good report, and a high standing in the
+Republic. Let it be seen that you have been at the trouble to remember
+people, and practise yourself to it so that the power may increase with
+you. There is nothing so alluring to the citizen as that. If there be a
+softness which you have not by nature, so affect it that it shall seem
+to be your own naturally. You have indeed a way with you which is not
+unbecoming to a good-natured man; but you must caress men--which is in
+truth vile and sordid at other times, but is absolutely necessary at
+elections. It is no doubt a mean thing to flatter some low fellow, but
+when it is necessary to make a friend it can be pardoned. A candidate
+must do it, whose face and look and tongue should be made to suit those
+he has to meet. What perseverance means I need not tell you. The word
+itself explains itself. As a matter of course, you shall not leave the
+city; but it is not enough for you to stick to your work in Rome and in
+the Forum. You must seek out the voters and canvass them separately; and
+take care that no one shall ask from another what it is that you want
+from him. Let it have been solicited by yourself, and often solicited."
+Quintus seems to have understood the business well, and the elder
+brother no doubt profited by the younger brother's care.
+
+It was so they did it at Rome. That men should have gone through all
+this in search of plunder and wealth does not strike us as being
+marvellous, or even out of place. A vile object justifies vile means.
+But there were some at Rome who had it in their hearts really to serve
+their country, and with whom it was at the same time a matter of
+conscience that, in serving their country, they would not dishonestly or
+dishonorably enrich themselves. There was still a grain of salt left.
+But even this could not make itself available for useful purpose without
+having recourse to tricks such as these!
+
+[Sidenote: B.C. 75, ętat. 32.]
+
+In his proper year Cicero became Quęstor, and had assigned to him by lot
+the duty of looking after the Western Division of Sicily. For Sicily,
+though but one province as regarded general condition, being under one
+governor with proconsular authority, retained separate modes of
+government, or, rather, varied forms of subjection to Rome, especially
+in matters of taxation, according as it had or had not been conquered
+from the Carthaginians.[87] Cicero was quartered at Lilybęum, on the
+west, whereas the other Quęstor was placed at Syracuse, in the east.
+There were at that time twenty Quęstors elected annually, some of whom
+remained in Rome; but most of the number were stationed about the
+Empire, there being always one as assistant to each Proconsul. When a
+Consul took the field with an army, he always had a Quęstor with him.
+This had become the case so generally that the Quęstor became, as it
+were, something between a private secretary and a senior lieutenant to a
+governor. The arrangement came to have a certain sanctity attached to
+it, as though there was something in the connection warmer and closer
+than that of mere official life; so that a Quęstor has been called a
+Proconsul's son for the time, and was supposed to feel that reverence
+and attachment that a son entertains for his father.
+
+But to Cicero, and to young Quęstors in general, the great attraction of
+the office consisted in the fact that the aspirant having once become a
+Quęstor was a Senator for the rest of his life, unless he should be
+degraded by misconduct. Gradually it had come to pass that the Senate
+was replenished by the votes of the people, not directly, but by the
+admission into the Senate of the popularly elected magistrates. There
+were in the time of Cicero between 500 and 600 members of this body. The
+numbers down to the time of Sulla had been increased or made up by
+direct selection by the old Kings, or by the Censors, or by some
+Dictator, such as was Sulla; and the same thing was done afterward by
+Julius Cęsar. The years between Sulla's Dictatorship and that of Cęsar
+were but thirty--from 79 to 49 B.C. These, however, were the years in
+which Cicero dreamed that the Republic could be re-established by means
+of an honest Senate, which Senate was then to be kept alive by the
+constant infusion of new blood, accruing to it from the entrance of
+magistrates who had been chosen by the people. Tacitus tells us that it
+was with this object that Sulla had increased the number of
+Quęstors.[88] Cicero's hopes--his futile hopes of what an honest Senate
+might be made to do--still ran high, although at the very time in which
+he was elected Quęstor he was aware that the judges, then elected from
+the Senate, were so corrupt that their judgment could not be trusted. Of
+this popular mode of filling the Senate he speaks afterward in his
+treatise De Legibus. "From those who have acted as magistrates the
+Senate is composed--a measure altogether in the popular interest, as no
+one can now reach the highest rank"--namely, the Senate--"except by the
+votes of the people, all power of selecting having been taken away from
+the Censors."[89] In his pleadings for P. Sextus he makes the same boast
+as to old times, not with absolute accuracy, as far as we can understand
+the old constitution, but with the same passionate ardor as to the body.
+"Romans, when they could no longer endure the rule of kings, created
+annual magistrates, but after such fashion that the Council of the
+Senate was set over the Republic for its guidance. Senators were chosen
+for that work by the entire people, and the entrance to that order was
+opened to the virtue and to the industry of the citizens at large."[90]
+When defending Cluentius, he expatiates on the glorious privileges of
+the Roman Senate. "Its high place, its authority, its splendor at home,
+its name and fame abroad, the purple robe, the ivory chair, the appanage
+of office, the fasces, the army with its command, the government of the
+provinces!"[91] On that splendor "apud exteras gentes," he expatiates in
+one of his attacks upon Verres.[92] From all this will be seen Cicero's
+idea of the chamber into which he had made his way as soon as he had
+been chosen Quęstor.
+
+In this matter, which was the pivot on which his whole life turned--the
+character, namely, of the Roman Senate--it cannot but be observed that
+he was wont to blow both hot and cold. It was his nature to do so, not
+from any aptitude for deceit, but because he was sanguine and
+vacillating--because he now aspired and now despaired. He blew hot and
+cold in regard to the Senate, because at times he would feel it to be
+what it was--composed, for the most part, of men who were time-serving
+and corrupt, willing to sell themselves for a price to any buyer; and
+then, again, at times he would think of the Senate as endowed with all
+those privileges which he names, and would dream that under his
+influence it would become what it should be--such a Senate as he
+believed it to have been in its old palmy days. His praise of the
+Senate, his description of what it should be and might be, I have given.
+To the other side of the picture we shall come soon, when I shall have
+to show how, at the trial of Verres, he declared before the judges
+themselves how terrible had been the corruption of the judgment-seat in
+Rome since, by Sulla's enactment, it had been occupied only by the
+Senators. One passage I will give now, in order that the reader may see
+by the juxtaposition of the words that he could denounce the Senate as
+loudly as he would vaunt its privileges. In the column on the left hand
+in the note I quote the words with which, in the first pleading against
+Verres, he declared "that every base and iniquitous thing done on the
+judgment-seat during the ten years since the power of judging had been
+transferred to the Senate should be not only denounced by him, but also
+proved;" and in that on the right I will repeat the noble phrases which
+he afterward used in the speech for Cluentius when he chose to speak
+well of the order.[93]
+
+It was on the Senate that they who wished well for Rome must depend--on
+the Senate, chosen, refreshed, and replenished from among the people; on
+a body which should be at the same time august and popular--as far
+removed on the one side from the tyranny of individuals as on the other
+from the violence of the mob; but on a Senate freed from its corruption
+and dirt, on a body of noble Romans, fitted by their individual
+character and high rank to rule and to control their fellow-citizens.
+This was Cicero's idea, and this the state of things which he endeavored
+to achieve. No doubt he dreamed that his own eloquence and his own
+example might do more in producing this than is given to men to achieve
+by such means. No doubt there was conceit in this--conceit and perhaps,
+vanity. It has to be admitted that Cicero always exaggerated his own
+powers. But the ambition was great, the purpose noble, and the course of
+his whole life was such as to bring no disgrace on his aspirations. He
+did not thunder against the judges for taking bribes, and then plunder a
+province himself. He did not speak grandly of the duty of a patron to
+his clients, and then open his hands to illicit payments. He did not
+call upon the Senate for high duty, and then devote himself to luxury
+and pleasure. He had a _beau ideal_ of the manner in which a Roman
+Senator should live and work, and he endeavored to work and live up to
+that ideal. There was no period after his Consulship in which he was not
+aware of his own failure. Nevertheless, with constant labor, but with
+intermittent struggles, he went on, till, at the end, in the last fiery
+year of his existence, he taught himself again to think that even yet
+there was a chance. How he struggled, and in struggling perished, we
+shall see by-and-by.
+
+What Cicero did as Quęstor in Sicily we have no means of knowing. His
+correspondence does not go back so far. That he was very active, and
+active for good, we have two testimonies, one of which is serious,
+convincing, and most important as an episode in his life. The other
+consists simply of a good story, told by himself of himself; not
+intended at all for his own glorification, but still carrying with it a
+certain weight. As to the first: Cicero was Quęstor in Lilybęum in the
+thirty-second year of his life. In the thirty-seventh year he was
+elected Ędile, and was then called upon by the Sicilians to attack
+Verres on their behalf. Verres was said to have carried off from Sicily
+plunder to the amount of nearly £400,000,[94] after a misrule of three
+years' duration. All Sicily was ruined. Beyond its pecuniary losses, its
+sufferings had been excruciating; but not till the end had come of a
+Governor's proconsular authority could the almost hopeless chance of a
+criminal accusation against the tyrant be attempted. The tyrant would
+certainly have many friends in Rome. The injured provincials would
+probably have none of great mark. A man because he had been Quęstor was
+not, necessarily, one having influence, unless he belonged to some great
+family. This was not the case with Cicero. But he had made for himself
+such a character during his year of office that the Sicilians declared
+that, if they could trust themselves to any man at Rome, it would be to
+their former Quęstor. It had been a part of his duty to see that the
+proper supply of corn was collected in the island and sent to Rome. A
+great portion of the bread eaten in Rome was grown in Sicily, and much
+of it was supplied in the shape of a tax. It was the hateful practice of
+Rome to extract the means of living from her colonies, so as to spare
+her own laborers. To this, hard as it was, the Sicilians were well used.
+They knew the amount required of them by law, and were glad enough when
+they could be quit in payment of the dues which the law required; but
+they were seldom blessed by such moderation on the part of their rulers.
+To what extent this special tax could be stretched we shall see when we
+come to the details of the trial of Verres. It is no doubt only from
+Cicero's own words that we learn that, though he sent to Rome plenteous
+supplies, he was just to the dealer, liberal to the pawns, and
+forbearing to the allies generally; and that when he took his departure
+they paid him honors hitherto unheard of.[95] But I think we may take it
+for granted that this statement is true; firstly, because it has never
+been contradicted; and then from the fact that the Sicilians all came to
+him in the day of their distress.
+
+As to the little story to which I have alluded, it has been told so
+often since Cicero told it himself, that I am almost ashamed to repeat
+it. It is, however, too emblematic of the man, gives us too close an
+insight both into his determination to do his duty and to his
+pride--conceit, if you will--at having done it, to be omitted. In his
+speech for Plancius[96] he tells us that by chance, coming direct from
+Sicily after his Quęstorship, he found himself at Puteoli just at the
+season when the fashion from Rome betook itself to that delightful
+resort. He was full of what he had done--how he had supplied Rome with
+corn, but had done so without injury to the Sicilians, how honestly he
+had dealt with the merchants, and had in truth won golden opinions on
+all sides--so much so that he thought that when he reached the city the
+citizens in a mob would be ready to receive him. Then at Puteoli he met
+two acquaintances. "Ah," says one to him, "when did you leave Rome? What
+news have you brought?" Cicero, drawing his head up, as we can see him,
+replied that he had just returned from his province. "Of course, just
+back from Africa," said the other. "Not so," said Cicero, bridling in
+anger--"stomachans fastidiose," as he describes it himself--"but from
+Sicily." Then the other lounger, a fellow who pretended to know
+everything, put in his word. "Do you not know that our Cicero has been
+Quęstor at Syracuse?" The reader will remember that he had been Quęstor
+in the other division of the island, at Lilybęum. "There was no use in
+thinking any more about it," says Cicero. "I gave up being angry and
+determined to be like any one else, just one at the waters." Yes, he had
+been very conceited, and well understood his own fault of character in
+that respect; but he would not have shown his conceit in that matter had
+he not resolved to do his duty in a manner uncommon then among Quęstors,
+and been conscious that he had done it.
+
+Perhaps there is no more certain way of judging a man than from his own
+words, if his real words be in our possession. In doing so, we are bound
+to remember how strong will be the bias of every man's mind in his own
+favor, and for that reason a judicious reader will discount a man's
+praise of himself. But the reader, to get at the truth, if he be indeed
+judicious, will discount them after a fashion conformable with the
+nature of the man whose character he is investigating. A reader will not
+be judicious who imagines that what a man says of his own praises must
+be false, or that all which can be drawn from his own words in his own
+dispraise must be true. If a man praise himself for honor, probity,
+industry, and patriotism, he will at any rate show that these virtues
+are dear to him, unless the course of his life has proved him to be
+altogether a hypocrite in such utterances. It has not been presumed that
+Cicero was a hypocrite in these utterances. He was honest and
+industrious; he did appreciate honor and love his country. So much is
+acknowledged; and yet it is supposed that what good he has told us of
+himself is false. If a man doubt of himself constantly; if in his most
+private intercourse and closest familiar utterances he admit
+occasionally his own human weakness; if he find himself to have failed
+at certain moments, and says so, the very feelings that have produced
+such confessions are proof that the highest points which have not been
+attained have been seen and valued. A man will not sorrowfully regret
+that he has won only a second place, or a third, unless he be alive to
+the glory of the first. But Cicero's acknowledgments have all been taken
+as proof against himself. All manner of evil is argued against him from
+his own words, when an ill meaning can be attached to them; but when he
+speaks of his great aspirations, he is ridiculed for bombast and vanity.
+On the strength of some perhaps unconsidered expression, in a letter to
+Atticus, he is condemned for treachery, whereas the sentences in which
+he has thoughtfully declared the purposes of his very soul are counted
+as clap-traps.
+
+No one has been so frequently condemned out of his mouth as Cicero, and
+naturally. In these modern days we have contemporary records as to
+prominent persons. Of the characters of those who lived in long-past
+ages we generally fail to have any clear idea, because we lack those
+close chronicles which are necessary for the purpose. What insight have
+we into the personality of Alexander the Great, or what insight had
+Plutarch, who wrote about him? As to Samuel Johnson, we seem to know
+every turn of his mind, having had a Boswell. Alexander had no Boswell.
+But here is a man belonging to those past ages of which I speak who was
+his own Boswell, and after such a fashion that, since letters were
+invented, no records have ever been written in language more clear or
+more attractive. It is natural that we should judge out of his own mouth
+one who left so many more words behind him than did any one else,
+particularly one who left words so pleasant to read. And all that he
+wrote was after some fashion about himself. His letters, like all
+letters, are personal to himself. His speeches are words coming out of
+his own mouth about affairs in which he was personally engaged and
+interested. His rhetoric consists of lessons given by himself about his
+own art, founded on his own experience, and on his own observation of
+others. His so-called philosophy gives us the workings of his own mind.
+No one has ever told the world so much about another person as Cicero
+has told the world about Cicero. Boswell pales before him as a
+chronicler of minutię. It may be a matter of small interest now to the
+bulk of readers to be intimately acquainted with a Roman who was never
+one of the world's conquerors. It may be well for those who desire to
+know simply the facts of the world's history, to dismiss as unnecessary
+the aspirations of one who lived so long ago. But if it be worth while
+to discuss the man's character, it must be worth while to learn the
+truth about it.
+
+"Oh that mine adversary had written a book!" Who does not understand the
+truth of these words! It is always out of a man's mouth that you may
+most surely condemn him. Cicero wrote many books, and all about himself.
+He has been honored very highly. Middleton, in the preface to his own
+biography, which, with all its charms, has become a bye-word for eulogy,
+quotes the opinion of Erasmus, who tells us that he loves the writings
+of the man "not only for the divine felicity of his style, but for the
+sanctity of his heart and morals." This was the effect left on the mind
+of an accurate thinker and most just man. But then also has Cicero been
+spoken of with the bitterest scorn. From Dio Cassius, who wrote two
+hundred and twenty years after Christ, down to Mr. Froude, whose Cęsar
+has just been published, he has had such hard things said of him by men
+who have judged him out of his own mouth, that the reader does not know
+how to reconcile what he now reads with the opinion of men of letters
+who lived and wrote in the century next after his death--with the
+testimony of such a man as Erasmus, and with the hearty praises of his
+biographer, Middleton. The sanctity of his heart and morals! It was thus
+that Erasmus was struck in reading his works. It is a feeling of that
+kind, I profess, that has induced me to take this work in hand--a
+feeling produced altogether by the study of his own words. It has seemed
+to be that he has loved men so well, has been so anxious for the true,
+has been so capable of honesty when dishonesty was common among all
+around him, has been so jealous in the cause of good government, has
+been so hopeful when there has been but little ground for hope, as to
+have deserved a reputation for sanctity of heart and morals.
+
+Of the speeches made by Cicero as advocate after his Quęstorship, and
+before those made in the accusation of Verres, we have the fragment only
+of the second of two spoken in defence of Marcus Tullius Decula, whom we
+may suppose to have been distantly connected with his family. He does
+not avow any relationship. "What," he says, in opening his argument,
+"does it become me, a Tullius, to do for this other Tullius, a man not
+only my friend, but my namesake?" It was a matter of no great
+importance, as it was addressed to judges not so called, but to
+"recuperatores," judges chosen by the Prętor, and who acted in lighter
+cases.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+_VERRES._
+
+
+There are six episodes, or, as I may say, divisions in the life of
+Cicero to which special interest attaches itself. The first is the
+accusation against Verres, in which he drove the miscreant howling out
+of the city. The second is his Consulship, in which he drove Catiline
+out of the city, and caused certain other conspirators who were joined
+with the arch rebel to be killed, either legally or illegally. The third
+was his exile, in which he himself was driven out of Rome. The fourth
+was a driving out, too, though of a more honorable kind, when he was
+compelled, much against his will, to undertake the government of a
+province. The fifth was Cęsar's passing of the Rubicon, the battle of
+Pharsalia, and his subsequent adherence to Cęsar. The last was his
+internecine combat with Antony, which produced the Philippics, and that
+memorable series of letters in which he strove to stir into flames the
+expiring embers of the Republic. The literary work with which we are
+acquainted is spread, but spread very unequally, over his whole life. I
+have already told the story of Sextus Roscius Amerinus, having taken it
+from his own words. From that time onward he wrote continually; but the
+fervid stream of his eloquence came forth from him with unrivalled
+rapidity in the twenty last miserable months of his life.
+
+We have now come to the first of those episodes, and I have to tell the
+way in which Cicero struggled with Verres, and how he conquered him. In
+74 B.C. Verres was Prętor in Rome. At that period of the Republic there
+were eight Prętors elected annually, two of whom remained in the city,
+whereas the others were employed abroad, generally with the armies of
+the Empire. In the next year, 73 B.C., Verres went in due course to
+Sicily with proconsular or proprętorial authority, having the government
+assigned to him for twelve months. This was usual and constitutional,
+but it was not unusual, even if unconstitutional, that this period
+should be prolonged. In the case of Verres it was prolonged, so that he
+should hold the office for three years. He had gone through the other
+offices of the State, having been Quęstor in Asia and Ędile afterward in
+Rome, to the great misfortune of all who were subjected to his handling,
+as we shall learn by-and-by. The facts are mentioned here to show that
+the great offices of the Republic were open to such a man as Verres.
+They were in fact more open to such a candidate than they would be to
+one less iniquitous--to an honest man or a scrupulous one, or to one
+partially honest, or not altogether unscrupulous. If you send a dog into
+a wood to get truffles, you will endeavor to find one that will tear up
+as many truffles as possible. A proconsular robber did not rob only for
+himself; he robbed more or less for all Rome. Verres boasted that with
+his three years of rule he could bring enough home to bribe all the
+judges, secure all the best advocates, and live in splendid opulence for
+the rest of his life. What a dog he was to send into a wood for
+truffles!
+
+To such a condition as this had Rome fallen when the deputies from
+Sicily came to complain of their late governor, and to obtain the
+services of Cicero in seeking for whatever reparation might be possible.
+Verres had carried on his plunder during the years 73, 72, 71 B.C.
+During this time Cicero had been engaged sedulously as an advocate in
+Rome. We know the names of some of the cases in which he was
+engaged--those, for instance, for Publius Oppius, who, having been
+Quęstor in Bithynia, was accused by his Proconsul of having endeavored
+to rob the soldiers of their dues. We are told that the poor province
+suffered greatly under these two officers, who were always quarrelling
+as to a division of their plunder. In this case the senior officer
+accused the younger, and the younger, by Cicero's aid, was acquitted.
+Quintilian more than once refers to the speech made for Oppius. Cicero
+also defended Varenus, who was charged with having murdered his brother,
+and one Caius Mustius, of whom we only know that he was a farmer of
+taxes. He was advocate also for Sthenius, a Sicilian, who was accused
+before the Tribunes by Verres. We shall hear of Sthenius again among the
+victims in Sicily. The special charge in this case was that, having been
+condemned by Verres as Prętor in Sicily, he had run away to Rome, which
+was illegal. He was, however, acquitted. Of these speeches we have only
+some short fragments, which have been quoted by authors whose works have
+come down to us, such as Quintilian; by which we know, at any rate, that
+Cicero's writings had been so far carefully preserved, and that they
+were commonly read in those days. I will translate here the concluding
+words of a short paper written by M. du Rozoir in reference to Cicero's
+life at this period: "The assiduity of our orator at the bar had
+obtained for him a high degree of favor among the people, because they
+had seen how strictly he had observed that Cincian law which forbade
+advocates to take either money or presents for then pleadings--which
+law, however, the advocates of the day generally did not scruple to
+neglect."[97] It is a good thing to be honest when honesty is in vogue;
+but to be honest when honesty is out of fashion is magnificent.
+
+In the affair with Verres, there are two matters to interest the
+reader--indeed, to instruct the reader--if the story were sufficiently
+well told. The iniquity of Verres is the first--which is of so
+extravagant a nature as to become farcical by the absurdity of the
+extent to which he was not afraid to go in the furtherance of his
+avarice and lust. As the victims suffered two thousand years ago, we can
+allow ourselves to be amused by the inexhaustible fertility of the man's
+resources and the singular iniquity of his schemes. Then we are brought
+face to face with the barefaced corruption of the Roman judges--a
+corruption which, however, became a regular trade, if not ennobled,
+made, at any rate, aristocratic by the birth, wealth high names, and
+senatorial rank of the robbers. Sulla, for certain State purposes--which
+consisted in the maintenance of the oligarchy--had transferred the
+privileges of sitting on the judgment-seat from the Equites, or Knights,
+to the Senators. From among the latter a considerable number--thirty,
+perhaps, or forty, or even fifty--were appointed to sit with the Prętor
+to hear criminal cases of importance, and by their votes, which were
+recorded on tablets, the accused person was acquitted or condemned. To
+be acquitted by the most profuse corruption entailed no disgrace on him
+who was tried, and often but little on the judges who tried him. In
+Cicero's time the practice, with all its chances, had come to be well
+understood. The Provincial Governors, with their Quęstors and
+lieutenants, were chosen from the high aristocracy, which also supplied
+the judges. The judges themselves had been employed, or hoped to be
+employed, in similar lucrative service. The leading advocates belonged
+to the same class. If the proconsular thief, when he had made his bag,
+would divide the spoil with some semblance of equity among his brethren,
+nothing could be more convenient. The provinces were so large, and the
+Greek spirit of commercial enterprise which prevailed in them so lively,
+that there was room for plunder ample, at any rate, for a generation or
+two. The Republic boasted that, in its love of pure justice, it had
+provided by certain laws for the protection of its allied subjects
+against any possible faults of administration on the part of its own
+officers. If any injury were done to a province, or a city, or even to
+an individual, the province, or city, or individual could bring its
+grievance to the ivory chair of the Prętor in Rome and demand redress;
+and there had been cases not a few in which a delinquent officer had
+been condemned to banishment. Much, indeed, was necessary before the
+scheme as it was found to exist by Verres could work itself into
+perfection. Verres felt that in his time everything had been done for
+security as well as splendor. He would have all the great officers of
+State on his side. The Sicilians, if he could manage the case as he
+thought it might be managed, would not have a leg to stand upon. There
+was many a trick within his power before they could succeed in making
+good even their standing before the Prętor. It was in this condition of
+things that Cicero bethought himself that he might at one blow break
+through the corruption of the judgment-seat, and this he determined to
+do by subjecting the judges to the light of public opinion. If Verres
+could be tried under a bushel, as it were, in the dark, as many others
+had been tried, so that little or nothing should be said about the trial
+in the city at large, then there would be no danger for the judges. It
+could only be by shaming them, by making them understand that Rome would
+become too hot to hold them, that they could be brought to give a
+verdict against the accused. This it was that Cicero determined to
+effect, and did effect. And we see throughout the whole pleadings that
+he was concerned in the matter not only for the Sicilians, or against
+Verres. Could something be done for the sake of Rome, for the sake of
+the Republic, to redeem the courts of justice from the obloquy which was
+attached to them? Might it be possible for a man so to address himself
+not only to the judgment-seat, but to all Rome, as to do away with this
+iniquity once and forever? Could he so fill the minds of the citizens
+generally with horror at such proceedings as to make them earnest in
+demanding reform? Hortensius, the great advocate of the day, was not
+only engaged on behalf of Verres, but he was already chosen as Consul
+for the next year. Metellus, who was elected Prętor for the next year,
+was hot in defence of Verres. Indeed, there were three Metelluses among
+the friends of the accused, who had also on his side the Scipio of the
+day. The aristocracy of Rome was altogether on the side of Verres, as
+was natural. But if Cicero might succeed at all in this which he
+meditated, the very greatness of his opponents would help him. When it
+was known that he was to be pitted against Hortensius as an advocate,
+and that he intended to defy Hortensius as the coming Consul, then
+surely Rome would be awake to the occasion; and if Rome could be made to
+awake herself, then would this beautiful scheme of wealth from
+provincial plunder be brought to an end.
+
+I will first speak of the work of the judges, and of the attempts made
+to hinder Cicero in the business he had undertaken. Then I will endeavor
+to tell something of the story of Verres and his doings. The subject
+divides itself naturally in this way. There are extant seven so-called
+orations about Verres, of which the two first apply to the manner in
+which the case should be brought before the courts. These two were
+really spoken, and were so effective that Verres--or probably
+Hortensius, on his behalf--was frightened into silence. Verres pleaded
+guilty, as we should say, which, in accordance with the usages of the
+court, he was enabled to do by retiring and going into voluntary
+banishment. This he did, sooner than stand his ground and listen to the
+narration of his iniquities as it would be given by Cicero in the full
+speech--the "perpetua oratio"--which would follow the examination of the
+witnesses. What the orator said before the examination of the witnesses
+was very short. He had to husband his time, as it was a part of the
+grand scheme of Hortensius to get adjournment after adjournment because
+of certain sacred rites and games, during the celebration of which the
+courts could not sit. All this was arranged for in the scheme; but
+Cicero, in order that he might baffle the schemers, got through his
+preliminary work as quickly as possible, saying all that he had to say
+about the manner of the trial, about the judges, about the scheme, but
+dilating very little on the iniquities of the criminal. But having thus
+succeeded, having gained his cause in a great measure by the unexpected
+quickness of his operations, then he told his story. Then was made that
+"perpetua oratio" by which we have learned the extent to which a Roman
+governor could go on desolating a people who were intrusted to his
+protection. This full narration is divided into five parts, each devoted
+to a separate class of iniquity. These were never spoken, though they
+appear in the form of speeches. They would have been spoken, if
+required, in answer to the defence made by Hortensius on behalf of
+Verres after the hearing of the evidence. But the defence broke down
+altogether, in the fashion thus described by Cicero himself. "In that
+one hour in which I spoke"--this was the speech which we designate as
+the Actio Prima contra Verrem, the first pleading made against Verres,
+to which we shall come just now--"I took away all hope of bribing the
+judges from the accused--from this brazen-faced, rich, dissolute, and
+abandoned man. On the first day of the trial, on the mere calling of the
+names of the witnesses, the people of Rome were able to perceive that if
+this criminal were absolved, then there could be no chance for the
+Republic. On the second day his friends and advocates had not only lost
+all hope of gaining their cause, but all relish for going on with it.
+The third day so paralyzed the man himself that he had to bethink
+himself not what sort of reply he could make, but how he could escape
+the necessity of replying by pretending to be ill."[98] It was in this
+way that the trial was brought to an end.
+
+But we must go back to the beginning. When an accusation was to be made
+against some great Roman of the day on account of illegal public
+misdoings, as was to be made now against Verres, the conduct of the
+case, which would require probably great labor and expense, and would
+give scope for the display of oratorical excellence, was regarded as a
+task in which a young aspirant to public favor might obtain honor and by
+which he might make himself known to the people. It had, therefore, come
+to pass that there might be two or more accusers anxious to undertake
+the work, and to show themselves off as solicitous on behalf of injured
+innocence, or desirous of laboring in the service of the Republic. When
+this was the case, a court of judges was called upon to decide whether
+this man or that other was most fit to perform the work in hand. Such a
+trial was called "Divinatio," because the judges had to get their lights
+in the matter as best they could without the assistance of witnesses--by
+some process of divination--with the aid of the gods, as it might be.
+Cicero's first speech in the matter of Verres is called In Quintum
+Cęcilium Divinatio, because one Cęcilius came forward to take the case
+away from him. Here was a part of the scheme laid by Hortensius. To deal
+with Cicero in such a matter would no doubt be awkward. His purpose, his
+diligence, his skill, his eloquence, his honesty were known. There must
+be a trial. So much was acknowledged; but if the conduct of it could be
+relegated to a man who was dishonest, or who had no skill, no fitness,
+no special desire for success, then the little scheme could be carried
+through in that way. So Cęcilius was put forward as Cicero's competitor,
+and our first speech is that made by Cicero to prove his own superiority
+to that of his rival.
+
+Whether Cęcilius was or was not hired to break down in his assumed duty
+as accuser, we do not know. The biographers have agreed to say that such
+was the case,[99] grounding their assertion, no doubt, on extreme
+probability. But I doubt whether there is any evidence as to this.
+Cicero himself brings this accusation, but not in that direct manner
+which he would have used had he been able to prove it. The Sicilians, at
+any rate, said that it was so. As to the incompetency of the man, there
+was probably no doubt, and it might be quite as serviceable to have an
+incompetent as a dishonest accuser. Cęcilius himself had declared that
+no one could be so fit as himself for the work. He knew Sicily well,
+having been born there. He had been Quęstor there with Verres, and had
+been able to watch the governor's doings. No doubt there was--or had
+been in more pious days--a feeling that a Quęstor should never turn
+against the Proconsul under whom he had served, and to whom he had held
+the position almost of a son.[100] But there was less of that feeling
+now than heretofore. Verres had quarrelled with his Quęstor. Oppius was
+called on to defend himself against the Proconsul with whom he had
+served. No one could know the doings of the governor of a province as
+well as his own Quęstor; and, therefore, so said Cęcilius, he would be
+the preferable accuser. As to his hatred of the man, there could be no
+doubt as to that. Everybody knew that they had quarrelled. The purpose,
+no doubt, was to give some colorable excuse to the judges for rescuing
+Verres, the great paymaster, from the fangs of Cicero.
+
+Cicero's speech on the occasion--which, as speeches went in those days,
+was very short--is a model of sagacity and courage. He had to plead his
+own fitness, the unfitness of his adversary, and the wishes in the
+matter of the Sicilians. This had to be done with no halting phrases. It
+was not simply his object to convince a body of honest men that, with
+the view of getting at the truth, he would be the better advocate of the
+two. We may imagine that there was not a judge there, not a Roman
+present, who was not well aware of that before the orator began. It was
+needed that the absurdity of the comparison between them should be
+declared so loudly that the judges would not dare to betray the
+Sicilians, and to liberate the accused, by choosing the incompetent man.
+When Cicero rose to speak, there was probably not one of them of his own
+party, not a Consul, a Prętor, an Ędile, or a Quęstor, not a judge, not
+a Senator, not a hanger-on about the courts, but was anxious that Verres
+with his plunder should escape. Their hope of living upon the wealth of
+the provinces hung upon it. But if he could speak winged words--words
+that should fly all over Rome, that might fly also among subject
+nations--then would the judges not dare to carry out this portion of the
+scheme.
+
+"When," he says, "I had served as Quęstor in Sicily, and had left the
+province after such a fashion that all the Sicilians had a grateful
+memory of my authority there, though they had older friends on whom they
+relied much, they felt that I might be a bulwark to them in their need.
+These Sicilians, harassed and robbed, have now come to me in public
+bodies, and have implored me to undertake their defence. 'The time has
+come,' they say, 'not that I should look after the interest of this or
+that man, but that I should protect the very life and well-being of the
+whole province.' I am inclined by my sense of duty, by the faith which I
+owe them, by my pity for them, by the example of all good Romans before
+me, by the custom of the Republic, by the old constitution, to undertake
+this task, not as pertaining to my own interests, but to those of my
+close friends."[101] That was his own reason for undertaking the case.
+Then he reminds the judges of what the Roman people wished--the people
+who had felt with dismay the injury inflicted upon them by Sulla's
+withdrawal of all power from the Tribunes, and by the putting the whole
+authority of the bench into the hands of the Senators. "The Roman
+people, much as they have been made to suffer, regret nothing of that
+they have lost so much as the strength and majesty of the old judges. It
+is with the desire of having them back that they demand for the Tribunes
+their former power. It is this misconduct of the present judges that has
+caused them to ask for another class of men for the judgment-seat. By
+the fault and to the shame of the judges of to-day, the Censor's
+authority, which has hitherto always been regarded as odious and stern,
+even that is now requested by the people."[102] Then he goes on to show
+that, if justice is intended, this case will be put into the hands of
+him whom the Sicilians have themselves chosen. Had the Sicilians said
+that they were unwilling to trust their affairs to Cęcilius because they
+had not known him, but were willing to trust him, Cicero, whom they did
+know, would not even that have been reasonable enough of itself? But the
+Sicilians had known both of them, had known Cęcilius almost as well as
+Cicero, and had expressed themselves clearly. Much as they desired to
+have Cicero, they were as anxious not to have Cęcilius. Even had they
+held their tongues about this, everybody would have known it; but they
+had been far from holding their tongues. "Yet you offer yourself to
+these most unwilling clients," he says, turning to Cęcilius. "Yet you
+are ready to plead in a cause that does not belong to you! Yet you would
+defend those who would rather have no defender than such a one as
+you!"[103] Then he attacks Hortensius, the advocate for Verres. "Let him
+not think that, if I am to be employed here, the judges can be bribed
+without infinite danger to all concerned. In undertaking this cause of
+the Sicilians, I undertake also the cause of the people of Rome at
+large. It is not only that one wretched sinner should be crushed, which
+is what the Sicilians want, but that this terrible injustice should be
+stopped altogether, in compliance with the wishes of the people."[104]
+When we remember how this was spoken, in the presence of those very
+judges, in the presence of Hortensius himself, in reliance only on the
+public opinion which he was to create by his own words, we cannot but
+acknowledge that it is very fine.
+
+After that he again turns upon Cęcilius. "Learn from me," he says, "how
+many things are expected from him who undertakes the accusation of
+another. If there be one of those qualities in you, I will give up to
+you all that you ask."[105] Cęcilius was probably even now in alliance
+with Verres. He himself, when Quęstor, had robbed the people in the
+collection of the corn dues, and was unable therefore to include that
+matter in his accusation. "You can bring no charge against him on this
+head, lest it be seen that you were a partner with him in the
+business."[106] He ridicules him as to his personal insufficiency.
+"What, Cęcilius! as to those practices of the profession without which
+an action such as this cannot be carried on, do you think that there is
+nothing in them? Need there be no skill in the business, no habit of
+speaking, no familiarity with the Forum, with the judgment-seats, and
+the laws?"[107] "I know well how difficult the ground is. Let me advise
+you to look into yourself, and to see whether you are able to do that
+kind of thing. Have you got voice for it, prudence, memory, wit? Are you
+able to expose the life of Verres, as it must be done, to divide it into
+parts and make everything clear? In doing all this, though nature should
+have assisted you"--as it has not at all, is of course implied--"if from
+your earliest childhood you had been imbued with letters; if you had
+learned Greek at Athens instead of at Lilybęum--Latin in Rome instead of
+in Sicily--still would it not be a task beyond your strength to
+undertake such a case, so widely thought of, to complete it by your
+industry, and then to grasp it in your memory; to make it plain by your
+eloquence, and to support it with voice and strength sufficient? 'Have I
+these gifts,' you will ask. Would that I had! But from my childhood I
+have done all that I could to attain them."[108]
+
+Cicero makes his points so well that I would fain go through the whole
+speech, were it not that a similar reason might induce me to give
+abridgments of all his speeches. It may not be that the readers of these
+orations will always sympathize with the orator in the matter which he
+has in hand--though his power over words is so great as to carry the
+reader with him very generally, even at this distance of time--but the
+neatness with which the weapon is used, the effectiveness of the thrust
+for the purpose intended, the certainty with which the nail is hit on
+the head--never with an expenditure of unnecessary force, but always
+with the exact strength wanted for the purpose--these are the
+characteristics of Cicero's speeches which carry the reader on with a
+delight which he will want to share with others, as a man when he has
+heard a good story instantly wishes to tell it again. And with Cicero we
+are charmed by the modernness, by the tone of to-day, which his language
+takes. The rapid way in which he runs from scorn to pity, from pity to
+anger, from anger to public zeal, and then instantly to irony and
+ridicule, implies a lightness of touch which, not unreasonably,
+surprises us as having endured for so many hundred years. That poetry
+should remain to us, even lines so vapid as some of those in which Ovid
+sung of love, seems to be more natural, because verses, though they be
+light, must have been labored. But these words spoken by Cicero seem
+almost to ring in our ears as having come to us direct from a man's
+lips. We see the anger gathering on the brow of Hortensius, followed by
+a look of acknowledged defeat. We see the startled attention of the
+judges as they began to feel that in this case they must depart from
+their intended purpose. We can understand how Cęcilius cowered, and
+found consolation in being relieved from his task. We can fancy how
+Verres suffered--Verres whom no shame could have touched--when all his
+bribes were becoming inefficient under the hands of the orator.
+
+Cicero was chosen for the task, and then the real work began. The work
+as he did it was certainly beyond the strength of any ordinary advocate.
+It was necessary that he should proceed to Sicily to obtain the evidence
+which was to be collected over the whole island. He must rate up, too,
+all the previous details of the life of this robber. He must be
+thoroughly prepared to meet the schemers on every point. He asked for a
+hundred and ten days for the purpose of getting up his case, but he took
+only fifty. We must imagine that, as he became more thoroughly versed in
+the intrigues of his adversaries, new lights came upon him. Were he to
+use the whole time allotted to him, or even half the time, and then make
+such an exposition of the criminal as he would delight to do were he to
+indulge himself with that "perpetua oratio" of which we hear, then the
+trial would be protracted till the coming of certain public games,
+during which the courts would not sit. There seem to have been three
+sets of games in his way--a special set for this year, to be given by
+Pompey, which were to last fifteen days; then the Ludi Romani, which
+were continued for nine days. Soon after that would come the games in
+honor of Victory--so soon that an adjournment over them would be
+obtained as a matter of course. In this way the trial would be thrown
+over into the next year, when Hortensius and one Metellus would be
+Consuls, and another Metellus would be the Prętor, controlling the
+judgment-seats. Glabrio was the Prętor for this present year. In Glabrio
+Cicero could put some trust. With Hortensius and the two Metelluses in
+power, Verres would be as good as acquitted. Cicero, therefore, had to
+be on the alert, so that in this unexpected way, by sacrificing his own
+grand opportunity for a speech, he might conquer the schemers. We hear
+how he went to Sicily in a little boat from an unknown port, so as to
+escape the dangers contrived for him by the friends of Verres.[109] If
+it could be arranged that the clever advocate should be kidnapped by a
+pirate, what a pleasant way would that be of putting an end to these
+abominable reforms! Let them get rid of Cicero, if only for a time, and
+the plunder might still be divided. Against all this he had to provide.
+When in Sicily he travelled sometimes on foot, for the sake of
+caution--never with the retinue to which he was entitled as a Roman
+senator. As a Roman senator he might have demanded free entertainment at
+any town he entered, at great cost to the town. But from all this he
+abstained, and hurried back to Rome with his evidence so quickly that he
+was able to produce it before the judges, so as to save the adjournments
+which he feared.
+
+Verres retired from the trial, pleading guilty, after hearing the
+evidence. Of the witnesses and of the manner in which they told the
+story, we have no account. The second speech which we have--the
+Divinatio, or speech against Cęcilius, having been the first--is called
+the Actio Prima contra Verrem--"the first process against Verres." This
+is almost entirely confined to an exhortation to the judges. Cicero had
+made up his mind to make no speech about Verres till after the trial
+should be over. There would not be the requisite time. The evidence he
+must bring forward. And he would so appall these corrupt judges that
+they should not dare to acquit the accused. This Actio Prima contains
+the words in which he did appall the judges. As we read them, we pity
+the judges. There were fourteen, whose names we know. That there may
+have been many more is probable. There was the Prętor Urbanus of the
+day, Glabrio. With him were Metellus, one of the Prętors for the next
+year, and Cęsonius, who, with Cicero himself, was Ędile designate. There
+were three Tribunes of the people and two military Tribunes. There was a
+Servilius, a Catulus, a Marcellus. Whom among these he suspected we can
+hardly say. Certainly he suspected Metellus. To Servilius[110] he paid
+an ornate compliment in one of the written orations published after the
+trial was over, from whence we may suppose that he was well inclined
+toward him. Of Glabrio he spoke well. The body, as a body, was of such a
+nature that he found it necessary to appall them. It is thus that he
+begins: "Not by human wisdom, O ye judges, but by chance, and by the
+aid, as it were, of the gods themselves, an event has come to pass by
+which the hatred now felt for your order, and the infamy attached to the
+judgment seat, may be appeased; for an opinion has gone abroad,
+disgraceful to the Republic, full of danger to yourselves--which is in
+the mouths of all men not only here in Rome but through all
+nations--that by these courts as they are now constituted, a man, if he
+be only rich enough, will never be condemned, though he be ever so
+guilty." What an exordium with which to begin a forensic pleading before
+a bench of judges composed of Prętors, Ędiles, and coming Consuls! And
+this at a time, too, when men's minds were still full of Sulla's power;
+when some were thinking that they too might be Sullas; while the idea
+was still strong that a few nobles ought to rule the Roman Empire for
+their own advantage and their own luxury! What words to address to a
+Metellus, a Catulus, and a Marcellus! I have brought before you such a
+wretch, he goes on to say, that by a just judgment upon him you can
+recover your favor with the people of Rome, and your credit with other
+nations. "This is a trial in which you, indeed, will have to judge this
+man who is accused, but in which also the Roman people will have to
+judge you. By what is done to him will be determined whether a man who
+is guilty, and at the same time rich, can possibly be condemned in
+Rome.[111]If the matter goes amiss here, all men will declare, not that
+better men should be selected out of your order, which would be
+impossible, but that another order of citizens must be named from which
+to select the judges."[112] This short speech was made. The witnesses
+were examined during nine days; then Hortensius, with hardly a struggle
+at a reply, gave way, and Verres stood condemned by his own verdict.
+
+When the trial was over, and Verres had consented to go into exile, and
+to pay whatever fine was demanded, the "perpetua oratio" which Cicero
+thought good to make on the matter was published to the world. It is
+written as though it was to have been spoken, with counterfeit tricks of
+oratory--with some tricks so well done in the first part of it as to
+have made one think that, when these special words were prepared, he
+must have intended to speak them. It has been agreed, however, that such
+was not the case. It consists of a narration of the villainies of
+Verres, and is divided into what have been called five different
+speeches, to which the following appellations are given: De Prętura
+Urbana, in which we are told what Verres did when he was city Prętor,
+and very many things also which he did before he came to that office, De
+Jurisdictione Siciliensi, in which is described his conduct as a Roman
+magistrate on the island; De Re Frumentaria, setting forth the
+abomination of his exactions in regard to the corn tax; De Signis,
+detailing the robberies he perpetuated in regard to statues and other
+ornaments; and De Suppliciis, giving an account of the murders he
+committed and the tortures he inflicted. A question is sometimes mooted
+in conversation whether or no the general happiness of the world has
+been improved by increasing civilization When the reader finds from
+these stories, as told by a leading Roman of the day, how men were
+treated under the Roman oligarchy--not only Greek allies but Romans
+also--I think he will be inclined to answer the question in favour of
+civilization.
+
+I can only give a few of the many little histories which have been
+preserved for us in this Actio Secunda; but perhaps these few may
+suffice to show how a great Roman officer could demean himself in his
+government. Of the doings of Verres before he went to Sicily I will
+select two. It became his duty on one occasion--a job which he seems to
+have sought for purpose of rapine--to go to Lampsacus, a town in Asia,
+as lieutenant, or legate, for Dolabella, who then had command in Asia.
+Lampsacus was on the Hellespont, an allied town of specially good
+repute. Here he is put up as a guest, with all the honors of a Roman
+officer, at the house of a citizen named Janitor. But he heard that
+another citizen, one Philodamus, had a beautiful daughter--an article
+with which we must suppose that Janitor was not equally well supplied.
+Verres, determined to get at the lady, orders that his creature Rubrius
+shall be quartered at the house of Philodamus. Philodamus, who from his
+rank was entitled to be burdened only with the presence of leading
+Romans, grumbles at this; but, having grumbled, consents, and having
+consented, does the best to make his house comfortable. He gives a great
+supper, at which the Romans eat and drink, and purposely create a
+tumult. Verres, we understand, was not there. The intention is that the
+girl shall be carried away and brought to him. In the middle of their
+cups the father is desired to produce his daughter; but this he refuses
+to do. Rubrius then orders the doors to be closed, and proceeds to
+ransack the house. Philodamus, who will not stand this, fetches his son,
+and calls his fellow-citizens around him. Rubrius succeeds in pouring
+boiling water over his host, but in the row the Romans get the worst of
+it. At last one of Verres's lictors--absolutely a Roman lictor--is
+killed, and the woman is not carried off. The man at least bore the
+outward signs of a lictor, but, according to Cicero, was in the pay of
+Verres as his pimp.
+
+So far Verres fails; and the reader, rejoicing at the courage of the
+father who could protect his own house even against Romans, begins to
+feel some surprise that this case should have been selected. So far the
+lieutenant had not done the mischief he had intended, but he soon
+avenges his failure. He induces Dolabella, his chief, to have Philodamus
+and his son carried off to Laodicea, and there tried before Nero, the
+then Proconsul, for killing the sham lictor. They are tried at Laodicea
+before Nero, Verres himself sitting as one of the judges, and are
+condemned. Then in the market place of the town, in the presence of each
+other, the father and son are beheaded--a thing, as Cicero says, very
+sad for all Asia to behold. All this had been done some years ago; and,
+nevertheless, Verres had been chosen Prętor, and sent to Sicily to
+govern the Sicilians.
+
+When Verres was Prętor at Rome--the year before he was sent to
+Sicily--it became his duty, or rather privilege, as he found it, to see
+that a certain temple of Castor in the city was given up in proper
+condition by the executors of a defunct citizen who had taken a contract
+for keeping it in repair. This man, whose name had been Junius, left a
+son, who was a Junius also under age, with a large fortune in charge of
+various trustees, tutors, as they were called, whose duty it was to
+protect the heir's interests. Verres, knowing of old that no property
+was so easily preyed on as that of a minor, sees at once that something
+may be done with the temple of Castor. The heir took oath, and to the
+extent of his property he was bound to keep the edifice in good repair.
+But Verres, when he made an inspection, finds everything to be in more
+than usually good order. There is not a scratch on the roof of which he
+can make use. Nothing has been allowed to go astray. Then "one of his
+dogs"--for he had boasted to his friend Ligur that he always went about
+with dogs to search out his game for him--suggested that some of the
+columns were out of the perpendicular. Verres does not know what this
+means; but the dog explains. All columns are, in fact, by strict
+measurement, more or less out of the perpendicular, as we are told that
+all eyes squint a little, though we do not see that they squint. But as
+columns ought to be perpendicular, here was a matter on which he might
+go to work. He does go to work. The trustees knowing their man--knowing
+also that in the present condition of Rome it was impossible to escape
+from an unjust Prętor without paying largely--went to his mistress and
+endeavored to settle the matter with her. Here we have an amusing
+picture of the way in which the affairs of the city were carried on in
+that lady's establishment; how she had her levee, took her bribes, and
+drove a lucrative trade. Doing, however, no good with her, the trustees
+settled with an agent to pay Verres two hundred thousand sesterces to
+drop the affair. This was something under £2000. But Verres repudiated
+the arrangement with scorn. He could do much better than that with such
+a temple and such a minor. He puts the repairs up to auction; and
+refusing a bid from the trustees themselves--the very persons who are
+the most interested in getting the work done, if there were work to
+do--has it knocked down to himself for five hundred and sixty thousand
+sesterces, or about £5000.[113] Then we are told how he had the
+pretended work done by the putting up of a rough crane. No real work is
+done, no new stones are brought, no money is spent. That is the way in
+which Verres filled his office as Prętor Urbanus; but it does not seem
+that any public notice is taken of his iniquities as long as he confined
+himself to little jobs such as this.
+
+Then we come to the affairs of Sicily--and the long list of robberies is
+commenced by which that province was made desolate. It seems that
+nothing gave so grand a scope to the greed of a public functionary who
+was at the same time governor and judge as disputed wills. It was not
+necessary that any of the persons concerned should dispute the will
+among them. Given the facts that a man had died and left property behind
+him, then Verres would find means to drag the heir into court, and
+either frighten him into payment of a bribe or else rob him of his
+inheritance. Before he left Rome for the province he heard that a large
+fortune had been left to one Dio on condition that he should put up
+certain statues in the market-place.[114] It was not uncommon for a man
+to desire the reputation of adorning his own city, but to choose that
+the expense should be borne by his heir rather than by himself. Failing
+to put up the statues, the heir was required to pay a fine to Venus
+Erycina--to enrich, that is, the worship of that goddess, who had a
+favorite temple under Mount Eryx. The statues had been duly erected.
+But, nevertheless, here there was an opening. So Verres goes to work,
+and in the name of Venus brings an action against Dio. The verdict is
+given, not in favor of Venus but in favor of Verres.
+
+This manner of paying honor to the gods, and especially to Venus, was
+common in Sicily. Two sons[115] received a fortune from their father,
+with a condition that, if some special thing were not done, a fine
+should be paid to Venus. The man had been dead twenty years ago. But
+"the dogs" which the Prętor kept were very sharp, and, distant as was
+the time, found out the clause. Action is taken against the two sons,
+who indeed gain their case; but they gain it by a bribe so enormous that
+they are ruined men. There was one Heraclius,[116] the son of Hiero, a
+nobleman of Syracuse, who received a legacy amounting to 3,000,000
+sesterces--we will say £24,000--from a relative, also a Heraclius. He
+had, too, a house full of handsome silver plate, silk and hangings, and
+valuable slaves. A man, "Dives equom, dives pictai vestis et auri."
+Verres heard, of course. He had by this time taken some Sicilian dogs
+into his service, men of Syracuse, and had learned from them that there
+was a clause in the will of the elder Heraclius that certain statues
+should be put up in the gymnasium of the city. They undertake to bring
+forward servants of the gymnasium who should say that the statues were
+never properly erected. Cicero tells us how Verres went to work, now in
+this court, now in that, breaking all the laws as to Sicilian
+jurisdiction, but still proceeding under the pretence of law, till he
+got everything out of the wretch--not only all the legacies from
+Heraclius, but every shilling, and every article left to the man by his
+father. There is a pretence of giving some of the money to the town of
+Syracuse; but for himself he takes all the valuables, the Corinthian
+vases, the purple hangings, what slaves he chooses. Then everything else
+is sold by auction. How he divided the spoil with the Syracusans, and
+then quarrelled with them, and how he lied as to the share taken by
+himself, will all be found in Cicero's narrative. Heraclius was of
+course ruined. For the stories of Epicrates and Sopater I must refer the
+reader to the oration. In that of Sopater there is the peculiarity that
+Verres managed to get paid by everybody all round.
+
+The story of Sthenius is so interesting that I cannot pass it by.
+Sthenius was a man of wealth and high standing, living at Therma in
+Sicily, with whom Verres often took up his abode; for, as governor, he
+travelled much about the island, always in pursuit of plunder. Sthenius
+had had his house full of beautiful things. Of all these Verres
+possessed himself--some by begging, some by demanding, and some by
+absolute robbery. Sthenius, grieved as he was to find himself pillaged,
+bore all this. The man was Roman Prętor, and injuries such as these had
+to be endured. At Therma, however, in the public place of the city,
+there were some beautiful statues. For these Verres longed, and desired
+his host to get them for him. Sthenius declared that this was
+impossible. The statues had, under peculiar circumstances, been
+recovered by Scipio Africanus from Carthage, and been restored by the
+Roman General to the Sicilians, from whom they had been taken, and had
+been erected at Therma. There was a peculiarly beautiful figure of
+Stesichorus, the poet, as an old man bent double, with a book in his
+hand--a very glorious work of art; and there was a goat--in bronze
+probably--as to which Cicero is at the pains of telling us that even he,
+unskilled as he was in such matters, could see its charms. No one had
+sharper eyes for such pretty ornaments than Cicero, or a more decided
+taste for them. But as Hortensius, his rival and opponent in this case,
+had taken a marble sphinx from Verres, he thought it expedient to show
+how superior he was to such matters. There was probably something of
+joke in this, as his predilections would no doubt be known to those he
+was addressing.[117]
+
+In the matter Sthenius was incorruptible, and not even the Prętor could
+carry them away without his aid. Cicero, who is very warm in praise of
+Sthenius, declares that "here at last Verres had found one town, the
+only one in the world, from which he was unable to carry away something
+of the public property by force, or stealth, or open command, or
+favor."[118] The governor was so disgusted with this that he abandoned
+Sthenius, leaving the house which he had plundered of everything, and
+betook himself to that of one Agathinus, who had a beautiful daughter,
+Callidama, who, with her husband, Dorotheus, lived with her father They
+were enemies of Sthenius, and we are given to understand that Verres
+ingratiated himself with them partly for the sake of Callidama, who
+seems very quickly to have been given up to him,[119] and partly that he
+might instigate them to bring actions against Sthenius. This is done
+with great success; so that Sthenius is forced to run away, and betake
+himself, winter as it was, across the seas to Rome. It has already been
+told that when he was at Rome an action was brought against him by
+Verres for having run away when he was under judgment, in which Cicero
+defended him, and in which he was acquitted. In the teeth of his
+acquittal, Verres persecuted the man by every form of law which came to
+his hands as Prętor, but always in opposition to the law. There is an
+audacity about the man's proceedings, in his open contempt of the laws
+which it was his special duty to carry out, making us feel how confident
+he was that he could carry everything before him in Rome by means of his
+money. By robbery and concealing his robberies, by selling his judgments
+in such a way that he should maintain some reticence by ordinary
+precaution, he might have made much money, as other governors had done.
+But he resolved that it would pay him better to rob everywhere openly,
+and then, when the day of reckoning came, to buy the judges wholesale.
+As to shame at such doings, there was no such feelings left among
+Romans.
+
+Before he comes to the story of Sthenius, Cicero makes a grandly
+ironical appeal to the bench before him: "Yes, O judges, keep this man;
+keep him in the State! Spare him, preserve him so that he, too, may sit
+with us as a judge here so that he, too, may, with impartiality, advise
+us, as a Senator, what may be best for us as to peace and war! Not that
+we need trouble ourselves as to his senatorial duties. His authority
+would be nothing. When would he dare, or when would he care, to come
+among us? Unless it might be in the idle month of February, when would a
+man so idle, so debauched, show himself in the Senate-house? Let him
+come and show himself. Let him advise us to attack the Cretans; to
+pronounce the Greeks of Byzantium free; to declare Ptolemy King.[120]
+Let him speak and vote as Hortensius may direct. This will have but
+little effect upon our lives or our property. But beyond this there is
+something we must look to; something that would be distrusted; something
+that every good man has to fear! If by chance this man should escape out
+of our hands, he would have to sit there upon that bench and be a judge.
+He would be called upon to pronounce on the lives of a Roman citizen. He
+would be the right-hand officer in the army of this man here,[121] of
+this man who is striving to be the lord and ruler of our judgment-seats.
+The people of Rome at least refuse this! This at least cannot be
+endured!"
+
+The third of these narratives tells us how Verres managed in his
+province that provision of corn for the use of Rome, the collection of
+which made the possession of Sicily so important to the Romans. He
+begins with telling his readers--as he does too frequently--how great
+and peculiar is the task he has undertaken; and he uses an argument of
+which we cannot but admit the truth, though we doubt whether any modern
+advocate would dare to put it forward. We must remember, however, that
+Romans were not accustomed to be shamefaced in praising themselves. What
+Cicero says of himself all others said also of themselves; only Cicero
+could say it better than others. He reminds us that he who accuses
+another of any crime is bound to be especially free from that crime
+himself. "Would you charge any one as a thief? you must be clear from
+any suspicion of even desiring another man's property. Have you brought
+a man up for malice or cruelty? take care that you be not found
+hard-hearted. Have you called a man a seducer or an adulterer? be sure
+that your own life shows no trace of such vices. Whatever you would
+punish in another, that you must avoid yourself. A public accuser would
+be intolerable, or even a caviller, who should inveigh against sins for
+which he himself is called in question. But in this man I find all
+wickednesses combined. There is no lust, no iniquity, no shamelessness
+of which his life does not supply with ample evidence." The nature of
+the difficulty to which Cicero is thus subjected is visible enough. As
+Verres is all that is bad, so must he, as accuser, be all that is good;
+which is more, we should say, than any man would choose to declare of
+himself! But he is equal to the occasion. "In regard to this man, O
+judges, I lay down for myself the law as I have stated it. I must so
+live that I must clearly seem to be, and always have been, the very
+opposite of this man, not only in my words and deeds, but as to that
+arrogance and impudence which you see in him." Then he shows how
+opposite he is to Verres at any rate, in impudence! "I am not sorry to
+see," he goes on to say, "that that life which has always been the life
+of my own choosing, has now been made a necessity to me by the law which
+I have laid down for myself."[122] Mr. Pecksniff spoke of himself in the
+same way, but no one, I think, believed him. Cicero probably was
+believed. But the most wonderful thing is, that his manner of life
+justified what he said of himself. When others of his own order were
+abandoned to lust, iniquity, and shamelessness, he lived in purity, with
+clean hands, doing good as far as was in his power to those around him.
+A laugh will be raised at his expense in regard to that assertion of his
+that, even in the matter of arrogance, his conduct should be the
+opposite of that of Verres. But this will come because I have failed to
+interpret accurately the meaning of those words, "oris oculorumque illa
+contumacia ac superbia quam videtis." Verres, as we can understand, had
+carried himself during the trial with a bragging, brazen, bold face,
+determined to show no shame as to his own doings. It is in this, which
+was a matter of manner and taste, that Cicero declares that he will be
+the man's opposite as well as in conduct. As to the ordinary boastings,
+by which it has to be acknowledged that Cicero sometimes disgusts his
+readers, it will be impossible for us to receive a just idea of his
+character without remembering that it was the custom of a Roman to
+boast. We wait to have good things said of us, or are supposed to wait.
+The Roman said them of himself. The "veni, vidi, vici" was the ordinary
+mode of expression in those times, and in earlier times among the
+Greeks.[123] This is distasteful to us; and it will probably be
+distasteful to those who come after us, two or three hundred years
+hence, that this or that British statesman should have made himself an
+Earl or a Knight of the Garter. Now it is thought by many to be proper
+enough. It will shock men in future days that great peers or rich
+commoners should have bargained for ribbons and lieutenancies and
+titles. Now it is the way of the time. Though virtue and vice may be
+said to remain the same from all time to all time, the latitudes allowed
+and the deviations encouraged in this or the other age must be
+considered before the character of a man can be discovered. The
+boastings of Cicero have been preserved for us. We have to bethink
+ourselves that his words are 2000 years old. There is such a touch of
+humanity in them, such a feeling of latter-day civilization and almost
+of Christianity, that we are apt to condemn what remains in them of
+paganism, as though they were uttered yesterday. When we come to the
+coarseness of his attacks, his descriptions of Piso by-and-by, his abuse
+of Gabinius, and his invectives against Antony; when we read his altered
+opinions, as shown in the period of Cęsar's dominion, his flattery of
+Cęsar when in power, and his exultations when Cęsar has been killed;
+when we find that he could be coarse in his language and a bully, and
+servile--for it has all to be admitted--we have to reflect under what
+circumstances, under what surroundings, and for what object were used
+the words which displease us. Speaking before the full court at this
+trial, he dared to say he knew how to live as a man and to carry himself
+as a gentleman. As men and gentlemen were then, he was justified.
+
+The description of Verres's rapacity in regard to the corn tax is long
+and complex, and need hardly be followed at length, unless by those who
+desire to know how the iniquity of such a one could make the most of an
+imposition which was in itself very bad, and pile up the burden till the
+poor province was unable to bear it. There were three kinds of
+imposition as to corn. The first, called the "decumanum," was simply a
+tithe.
+
+The producers through the island had to furnish Rome with a tenth of
+their produce, and it was the Prętor's duty, or rather that of the
+Quęstor under the Prętor, to see that the tithe was collected. How
+Verres saw to this himself, and how he treated the Sicilian husbandmen
+in regard to the tithe, is so told that we are obliged to give the man
+credit for an infinite fertility of resources. Then there is the
+"emptum," or corn bought for the use of Rome, of which there were two
+kinds. A second tithe had to be furnished at a price fixed by the Roman
+Senate, which price was considered to be below that of its real value,
+and then 800,000 bushels were purchased, or nominally purchased, at a
+price which was also fixed by the Senate, but which was nearer to the
+real value. Three sesterces a bushel for the first and four for the
+last, were the prices fixed at this time. For making these payments vast
+sums of money were remitted to Verres, of which the accounts were so
+kept that it was hard to say whether any found its way into the hands of
+the farmers who undoubtedly furnished the corn. The third corn tax was
+the "ęstimatum." This consisted of a certain fixed quantity which had to
+be supplied to the Prętor for the use of his governmental
+establishment--to be supplied either in grain or in money. What such a
+one as Verres would do with his, the reader may conceive.
+
+All this was of vital importance to Rome. Sicily and Africa were the
+granaries from which Rome was supplied with its bread. To get supplies
+from a province was necessary. Rich men have servants in order that they
+may live at ease themselves. So it was with the Romans to whom the
+provinces acted as servants. It was necessary to have a sharp agent,
+some Proconsul or Proprętor; but when there came one so sharp as Verres,
+all power of recreating supplies would for a time be destroyed. Even
+Cicero boasted that in a time of great scarcity, he, being then Quęstor
+in Sicily, had sent extraordinary store of corn over to the city.[124]
+But he had so done it as to satisfy all who were concerned.
+
+Verres, in his corn dealings with the Sicilians, had a certain friend,
+companion, and minister--one of his favorite dogs, perhaps we may call
+him--named Apronius, whom Cicero specially describes. The description I
+must give, because it is so powerful; because it shows us how one man
+could in those days speak of another in open court before all the world;
+because it affords us an instance of the intensity of hatred which the
+orator could throw into his words; but I must hide it in the original
+language, as I could not translate it without offence.[125]
+
+Then we have a book devoted to the special pillage of statues and other
+ornaments, which, for the genius displayed in story-telling, is perhaps
+of all the Verrine orations the most amusing. The Greek people had
+become in a peculiar way devoted to what we generally call Art. We are
+much given to the collecting of pictures, china, bronze, and marbles,
+partly from love of such things, partly from pride in ornamenting our
+houses so as to excite the admiration of others, partly from a feeling
+that money so invested is not badly placed with a view to future
+returns. All these feelings operated with the Greeks to a much greater
+extent. Investments in consols and railway shares were not open to them.
+Money they used to lend at usury, no doubt, but with a great chance of
+losing it. The Greek colonists were industrious, were covetous, and
+prudent. From this it had come to pass that, as they made their way
+about the world--to the cities which they established round the
+Mediterranean--they collected in their new homes great store of
+ornamental wealth. This was done with much profusion at Syracuse, a
+Greek city in Sicily, and spread from them over the whole island. The
+temples of the gods were filled with the works of the great Greek
+artists, and every man of note had his gallery. That Verres, hog as he
+is described to have been, had a passion for these things, is manifest
+to us. He came to his death at last in defence of some favorite images.
+He had returned to Rome by means of Cęsar's amnesty, and Marc Antony had
+him murdered because he would not surrender some treasures of art. When
+we read the De Signis--About Statues--we are led to imagine that the
+search after these things was the chief object of the man throughout his
+three years of office--as we have before been made to suppose that all
+his mind and time had been devoted to the cheating of the Sicilians in
+the matter of corn. But though Verres loved these trinkets, it was not
+altogether for himself that he sought them. Only one third of his
+plunder was for himself. Senators, judges, advocates, Consuls, and
+Prętors could be bribed with articles of _vertu_ as well as with money.
+
+There are eleven separate stories told of these robberies. I will give
+very shortly the details of one or two. There was one Marcus Heius, a
+rich citizen of Messana, in whose house Verres took great delight.
+Messana itself was very useful to him, and the Mamertines, as the people
+of Messana were called were his best friends in all Sicily: for he made
+Messana the depot of his plunder, and there he caused to be built at the
+expense of the Government an enormous ship called the _Cybea_,[126] in
+which his treasures were carried out of the island. He therefore
+specially favored Messana, and the district of Messana was supposed to
+have been scourged by him with lighter rods than those used elsewhere in
+Sicily. But this man Heius had a chapel, very sacred, in which were
+preserved four specially beautiful images. There was a Cupid by
+Praxiteles, and a bronze Hercules by Myro, and two Can[oe]phrę by
+Polycletus. These were treasures which all the world came to see, and
+which were open to be seen by all the world. These Verres took away, and
+caused accounts to be forged in which it was made to appear that he had
+bought them for trifling sums. It seems that some forced assent had been
+obtained from Heius as to the transaction. Now there was a plan in vogue
+for making things pleasant for a Proconsul retiring from his government,
+in accordance with which a deputation would proceed from the province to
+Rome to declare how well and kindly the Proconsul had behaved in his
+government. The allies, even when they had been, as it were, skinned
+alive by their governor, were constrained to send their deputations.
+Deputations were got up in Sicily from Messana and Syracuse, and with
+the others from Messana came this man Heius. Heius did not wish to tell
+about his statues; but he was asked questions, and was forced to answer.
+Cicero informs us how it all took place. "He was a man," he said--this
+is what Cicero tells us that Heius said--"who was well esteemed in his
+own country, and would wish you"--you judges--"to think well of his
+religious spirit and of his personal dignity. He had come here to praise
+Verres because he had been required to do so by his fellow-citizens. He,
+however, had never kept things for sale in his own house; and had he
+been left to himself, nothing would have induced him to part with the
+sacred images which had been left to him by his ancestors as the
+ornaments of his own chapel.[127] Nevertheless, he had come to praise
+Verres, and would have held his tongue had it been possible."
+
+Cicero finishes his catalogue by telling us of the manifold robberies
+committed by Verres in Syracuse, especially from the temples of the
+gods; and he begins his account of the Syracusan iniquities by drawing a
+parallel between two Romans whose names were well known in that city:
+Marcellus, who had besieged it as an enemy and taken it, and Verres, who
+had been sent to govern it in peace. Marcellus had saved the lives of
+the Syracusans; Verres had made the Forum to run with their blood. The
+harbor which had held its own against Marcellus, as we may read in our
+Livy, had been wilfully opened by Verres to Cilician pirates. This
+Syracuse which had been so carefully preserved by its Roman conqueror,
+the most beautiful of all the Greek cities on the face of the earth--so
+beautiful that Marcellus had spared to it all its public ornaments--had
+been stripped bare by Verres. There was the temple of Minerva from which
+he had taken all the pictures. There were doors to this temple of such
+beauty that books had been written about them. He stripped the ivory
+ornaments from them, and the golden balls with which they had been made
+splendid. He tore off from them the head of the Gorgon and carried it
+away, leaving them to be rude doors, Goth that he was!
+
+And he took the Sappho from the Prytaneum, the work of Silanion! a thing
+of such beauty that no other man can have the like of it in his own
+private house; yet Verres has it--a man hardly fit to carry such a work
+of art as a burden, not possess it as a treasure of his own. "What,
+too!" he says, "have you not stolen Pęan from the temple of
+Ęsculapius--a statue so remarkable for its beauty, so well-known for the
+worship attached to it, that all the world has been wont to visit it?
+What! has not the image of Aristęus been taken by you from the temple of
+Bacchus? Have you not even stolen the statue of Jupiter Imperator, so
+sacred in the eyes of all men--that Jupiter which the Greeks call
+Ourios? You have not hesitated to rob the temple of Proserpine of the
+lovely head in Parian marble."[128] Then Cicero speaks of the worship
+due to all these gods as though he himself believed in their godhead. As
+he had begun this chapter with the Mamertines of Messana, so he ends it
+with an address to them. "It is well that you should come, you alone out
+of all the provinces, and praise Verres here in Rome. But what can you
+say for him? Was it not your duty to have built a ship for the Republic?
+You have built none such, but have constructed a huge private
+transport-vessel for Verres. Have you not been exempted from your tax on
+corn? Have you not been exempted in regard to naval and military
+recruits? Have you not been the receptacle of all his stolen goods? They
+will have to confess, these Mamertines, that many a ship laden with his
+spoils has left their port, and especially this huge transport-ship
+which they built for him!"
+
+In the De Suppliciis--the treatise about punishments, as the last
+division of this process is called--Cicero tells the world how Verres
+exacted vengeance from those who were opposed to him, and with what
+horrid cruelty he raged against his enemies. The stories, indeed, are
+very dreadful. It is harrowing to think that so evil a man should have
+been invested with powers so great for so bad a purpose. But that which
+strikes a modern reader most is the sanctity attached to the name of a
+Roman citizen, and the audacity with which the Roman Proconsul
+disregarded that sanctity. "Cives Romanus" is Cicero's cry from the
+beginning to the end. No doubt he is addressing himself to Romans, and
+seeking popularity, as he always did. But, nevertheless, the demands
+made upon the outside world at large by the glory of that appellation
+are astonishing, even when put forward on such an occasion as this. One
+Gavius escapes from a prison in Syracuse, and, making his way to
+Messana, foolishly boasts that he would be soon over in Italy, out of
+the way of Prętor Verres and his cruelties. Verres, unfortunately, is in
+Messana, and soon hears from some of his friends, the Mamertines, what
+Gavius was saying. He at once orders Gavius to be flogged in public.
+"Cives Romanus sum!" exclaims Gavius, no doubt truly. It suits Verres to
+pretend to disbelieve this, and to declare that the man is a runagate
+slave. The poor wretch still cries "Cives Romanus!" and trusts alone to
+that appeal. Whereupon Verres puts up a cross on the sea-shore, and has
+the man crucified in sight of Italy, so that he shall be able to see the
+country of which he is so proud. Whether he had done anything to deserve
+crucifixion, or flogging, or punishment at all, we are not told. The
+accusation against Verres is not for crucifying the man, but for
+crucifying the Roman. It is on this occasion that Cicero uses the words
+which have become proverbial as to the iniquity of this proceeding.[129]
+During the telling of this story he explains this doctrine, claiming for
+the Roman citizen, all the world over, some such protection as
+freemasons are supposed to give each other, whether known or unknown.
+"Men of straw," he says, "of no special birth, go about the world. They
+resort to places they have never seen before, where they know none, and
+none know them. Here, trusting to their claim solely, they feel
+themselves to be safe--not only where our magistrates are to be found,
+who are bound both by law and by opinion, not only among other Roman
+citizens who speak their language and follow the same customs, but
+abroad, over the whole world, they find this to be sufficient
+protection."[130] Then he goes on to say that if any Prętor may at his
+will put aside this sanctity, all the provinces, all the kingdoms, all
+the free states, all the world abroad, will very soon lose the feeling.
+
+But the most remarkable story is that told of a certain pirate captain.
+Verres had been remiss in regard to the pirates--very cowardly, indeed,
+if we are to believe Cicero. Piracy in the Mediterranean was at that
+time a terrible drawback to trade--that piracy that a year or two
+afterward Pompey was effectual in destroying. A governor in Sicily had,
+among other special duties, to keep a sharp lookout for the pirates.
+This Verres omitted so entirely that these scourges of the sea soon
+learned that they might do almost as they pleased on the Sicilian
+coasts. But it came to pass that on one day a pirate vessel fell by
+accident into the hands of the governor's officers. It was not taken,
+Cicero says, but was so overladen that it was picked up almost
+sinking.[131] It was found to be full of fine, handsome men, of silver
+both plated and coined, and precious stuffs. Though not "taken," it was
+"found," and carried into Syracuse. Syracuse is full of the news, and
+the first demand is that the pirates, according to Roman custom, shall
+all be killed. But this does not suit Verres. The slave-markets of the
+Roman Empire are open, and there are men among the pirates whom it will
+suit him better to sell than to kill. There are six musicians,
+"symphoniacos homines," whom he sends as a present to a friend at Rome.
+But the people of Syracuse are very much in earnest. They are too sharp
+to be put off with pretences, and they count the number of slaughtered
+pirates. There are only some useless, weak, ugly old fellows beheaded
+from day to day; and being well aware how many men it must have taken to
+row and manage such a vessel, they demand that the full crew shall be
+brought to the block. "There is nothing in victory more sweet," says
+Cicero, "no evidence more sure, than to see those whom you did fear, but
+have now got the better of, brought out to tortures or death."[132]
+Verres is so much frightened by the resolution of the citizens that he
+does not dare to neglect their wishes. There are lying in the prisons of
+Syracuse a lot of prisoners, Roman citizens, of whom he is glad to rid
+himself. He has them brought out, with their heads wrapped up so that
+they shall not be known, and has them beheaded instead of the pirates! A
+great deal is said, too, about the pirate captain--the arch-pirate, as
+he is called. There seems to have been some money dealings personally
+between him and Verres, on account of which Verres kept him hidden. At
+any rate, the arch-pirate was saved. "In such a manner this celebrated
+victory is managed.[133] The pirate ship is taken, and the chief pirate
+is allowed to escape. The musicians are sent to Rome. The men who are
+good-looking and young are taken to the Prętor's house. As many Roman
+citizens as will fill their places are carried out as public enemies,
+and are tortured and killed! All the gold and silver and precious stuffs
+are made a prize of by Verres!"
+
+Such are the accusations brought against this wonderful man--the truth
+of which has, I think, on the whole been admitted. The picture of Roman
+life which it displays is wonderful, that such atrocities should have
+been possible; and equally so of provincial subjection, that such
+cruelties should have been endured. But in it all the greatest wonder is
+that there should have risen up a man so determined to take the part of
+the weak against the strong with no reward before him, apparently with
+no other prospect than that of making himself odious to the party to
+which he belonged. Cicero was not a Gracchus, anxious to throw himself
+into the arms of the people; he was an oligarch by conviction, born to
+oligarchy, bred to it, convinced that by it alone could the Roman
+Republic be preserved. But he was convinced also that unless these
+oligarchs could be made to do their duty the Republic could not stand.
+Therefore it was that he dared to defy his own brethren, and to make the
+acquittal of Verres an impossibility. I should be inclined to think that
+the day on which Hortensius threw up the sponge, and Verres submitted to
+banishment and fine, was the happiest in the orator's life.
+
+Verres was made to pay a fine which was very insufficient for his
+crimes, and then to retire into comfortable exile. From this he returned
+to Rome when the Roman exiles were amnestied, and was shortly afterward
+murdered by Antony, as has been told before.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+_CICERO AS ĘDILE AND PRĘTOR._
+
+
+[Sidenote: B.C. 69, ętat. 38.]
+
+The year after the trial of Verres was that of Cicero's Ędileship. We
+know but little of him in the performance of the duties of this office,
+but we may gather that he performed them to the satisfaction of the
+people. He did not spend much money for their amusements, although it
+was the custom of Ędiles to ruin themselves in seeking popularity after
+this fashion; and yet when, two years afterward, he solicited the
+Prętorship from the people, he was three times elected as first Prętor
+in all the comitia--three separate elections having been rendered
+necessary by certain irregularities and factious difficulties. To all
+the offices, one after another, he was elected in his first year--the
+first year possible in accordance with his age--and was elected first in
+honor, the first as Prętor, and then the first as Consul. This, no
+doubt, was partly due to his compliance with those rules for canvassing
+which his brother Quintus is said to have drawn out, and which I have
+quoted; but it proves also the trust which was felt in him by the
+people. The candidates, for the most part, were the candidates for the
+aristocracy. They were put forward with the idea that thus might the
+aristocratic rule of Rome be best maintained. Their elections were
+carried on by bribery, and the people were for the most part indifferent
+to the proceeding. Whether it might be a Verres, or an Antony, or a
+Hortensius, they took the money that was going. They allowed themselves
+to be delighted with the games, and they did as they were bid. But every
+now and then there came up a name which stirred them, and they went to
+the voting pens--ovilia--with a purpose of their own. When such a
+candidate came forward, he was sure to be first. Such had been Marius,
+and such had been the great Pompey, and such was Cicero. The two former
+were men successful in war, who gained the voices of the people by their
+victories. Cicero gained them by what he did inside the city. He could
+afford not to run into debt and ruin himself during his Ędileship, as
+had been common with Ędiles, because he was able to achieve his
+popularity in another way. It was the chief duty of the Ędiles to look
+after the town generally--to see to the temples of the gods, to take
+care that houses did not tumble down, to look to the cleansing of the
+streets, and to the supply of water. The markets were under them, and
+the police, and the recurrent festivals. An active man, with
+common-sense, such as was Cicero, no doubt did his duty as Ędile well.
+
+He kept up his practice as an advocate during his years of office. We
+have left to us the part of one speech and the whole of another spoken
+during this period. The former was in favor of Fonteius, whom the Gauls
+prosecuted for plundering them as Proprętor, and the latter is a civil
+case on behalf of Cęcina, addressed to the "Recuperatores," as had been
+that for Marcus Tullius. The speech for Fonteius is remarkable as being
+as hard against the provincial Gauls as his speech against Verres had
+been favorable to the Sicilians. But the Gauls were barbarians, whereas
+the Sicilians were Greeks. And it should be always remembered that
+Cicero spoke as an advocate, and that the praise and censure of an
+advocate require to be taken with many grains of salt. Nothing that
+these wretched Gauls could say against a Roman citizen ought to be
+accepted in evidence! "All the Romans," he says, "who have been in the
+province wish well to Fonteius. Would you rather believe these
+Gauls--led by what feeling? By the opinion of men! Is the opinion, then,
+of your enemies of greater weight than that of your fellow-citizens, or
+is it the greater credibility of the witnesses? Would you prefer, then,
+unknown men to known--dishonest men to honest--foreigners to your own
+countrymen--greedy men to those who come before you for nothing--men of
+no religion to those who fear the gods--those who hate the Empire and
+the name of Rome to allies and citizens who are good and faithful?"[134]
+In every word of this he begs the question so as to convince us that his
+own case was weak; and when he makes a final appeal to the pity of the
+judges we are sure that Fonteius was guilty. He tells the judges that
+the poor mother of the accused man has no other support than this son,
+and that there is a sister, one of the virgins devoted to the service of
+Vesta, who, being a vestal virgin, cannot have sons of her own, and is
+therefore entitled to have her brother preserved for her. When we read
+such arguments as these, we are sure that Fonteius had misused the
+Gauls. We believe that he was acquitted, because we are told that he
+bought a house in Rome soon afterward; but we feel that he escaped by
+the too great influence of his advocate. We are driven to doubt whether
+the power over words which may be achieved by a man by means of natural
+gifts, practice, and erudition, may not do evil instead of good. A man
+with such a tongue as that of Cicero will make the listener believe
+almost whatever he will; and the advocate is restrained by no horror of
+falsehood. In his profession alone it is considered honorable to be a
+bulwark to deception, and to make the worse appear the better cause.
+Cicero did so when the occasion seemed to him to require it, and has
+been accused of hypocrisy in consequence. There is a passage in one of
+the dialogues, De Oratore, which has been continually quoted against him
+because the word "fibs" has been used with approval. The orator is told
+how it may become him to garnish his good story with little white
+lies--"mendaciunculis."[135] The advice does not indeed refer to facts,
+or to evidence, or to arguments. It goes no farther than to suggest that
+amount of exaggeration which is used by every teller of a good story in
+order that the story may be good. Such "mendaciuncula" are in the mouth
+of every diner-out in London, and we may pity the dinner-parties at
+which they are not used. Reference is made to them now because the use
+of the word by Cicero, having been misunderstood by some who have
+treated his name with severity, has been brought forward in proof of his
+falsehood. You shall tell a story about a very little man, and say that
+he is only thirty-six inches. You know very well that he is more than
+four feet high. That will be a "mendaciunculum," according to Cicero.
+The phrase has been passed on from one enemy to another, till the little
+fibs of Cicero's recommending have been supposed to be direct lies
+suggested by him to all advocates, and therefore continually used by him
+as an advocate. They have been only the garnishing of his drolleries. As
+an advocate, he was about as false and about as true as an advocate of
+our own day.[136] That he was not paid, and that our English barristers
+are paid for the work they do, makes, I think, no difference either in
+the innocency or the falseness of the practice. I cannot but believe
+that, hereafter, an improved tone of general feeling will forbid a man
+of honor to use arguments which he thinks to be untrue, or to make
+others believe that which he does not believe himself. Such is not the
+state of things now in London, nor was it at Rome in Cicero's time.
+There are touches of eloquence in the plea for Fonteius, but the reader
+will probably agree with me that the orator was well aware that the late
+governor who was on his trial had misused those unfortunate Gauls.
+
+In the year following that of Cicero's Ędileship were written the first
+of his epistles which have come to us. He was then not yet thirty-nine
+years old--B.C. 68--and during that year and the next seven were written
+eleven letters, all to Atticus. Those to his other friends--Ad
+Familiares, as we have been accustomed to call them; Ad Diversos, they
+are commonly called now--began only with the close of his consular year.
+How it has come to pass that there have been preserved only those which
+were written after a period of life at which most men cease to be free
+correspondents, cannot be said with certainty. It has probably been
+occasioned by the fact that he caused his letters to be preserved as
+soon as he himself perceived how great would be their value. Of the
+nature of their value it is hardly possible to speak too highly. I am
+not prepared, indeed, to agree with the often quoted assertion of
+Cornelius Nepos that he who has read his letters to Atticus will not
+lack much of the history of those days.[137]
+
+A man who should have read them and nothing else, even in the days of
+Augustus, would not have learned much of the preceding age. But if not
+for the purpose of history, the letters generally have, if read aright,
+been all but enough for the purpose of biography. With a view to the
+understanding of the man's character, they have, I think, been enough.
+From them such a flood of light has been turned upon the writer that all
+his nobility and all his defects, all his aspirations and all his
+vacillations, have been made visible. We know how human he was, and how,
+too, he was only human--how he sighed for great events, and allowed
+himself to think sometimes that they could be accomplished by small
+man[oe]uvres--how like a man he could be proud of his work and
+boast--how like a man he could despair and almost die. But I wish it to
+be acknowledged, by those who read his letters in order that they may
+also read his character, that they were, when written, private letters,
+intended to tell the truth, and that if they are to be believed in
+reference to his weaknesses, they are also to be believed in reference
+to his strength. If they are singularly transparent as to the
+man--opening, especially to Atticus, the doors of his soul more
+completely than would even any girl of the nineteenth century when
+writing to her bosom friend--they must be taken as being more honestly
+true. To regard the aspirations as hypocritical, and only the meaner
+effusions of his mind as emblematic of the true man, is both
+unreasonable and uncharitable. Nor, I think, will that reader grasp the
+way to see the truth who cannot teach himself what has in Cicero's case,
+been the effect of daring to tell to his friend an unvarnished tale.
+When with us some poor thought does make its way across our minds, we do
+not sit down and write it to another, nor, if we did, would an
+immortality be awarded to the letter. If one of us were to lose his
+all--as Cicero lost his all when he was sent into exile--I think it
+might well be that he should for a time be unmanned; but he would either
+not write, or, in writing, would hide much of his feelings. On losing
+his Tullia, some father of to-day would keep it all in his heart, would
+not maunder out his sorrows. Even with our truest love for our friends,
+some fear is mingled which forbids the use of open words. Whether this
+be for good or for evil I will not say, but it is so. Cicero, whether he
+did or did not know that his letters would live, was impeded by no such
+fear. He said everything that there was within him--being in this, I
+should say, quite as unlike to other Romans of the day as he was to
+ourselves. In the collection as it has come to us there are about fifty
+letters--not from Cicero--written to Cicero by his brother, by Decimus
+Brutus, by Plancus, and others. It will, I think, be admitted that their
+tone is quite different from that used by himself. There are none,
+indeed, from Atticus--none written under terms of such easy friendship
+as prevailed when many were written by Cicero himself. It will probably
+be acknowledged that his manner of throwing himself open to his
+correspondent was peculiar to him. If this be so, he should surely have
+the advantage as well as the disadvantage of his own mode of utterance.
+The reader who allows himself to think that the true character of the
+man is to be read in the little sly things he said to Atticus, but that
+the nobler ideas were merely put forth to cajole the public, is as
+unfair to himself as he is to Cicero.
+
+In reading the entire correspondence--the letters from Cicero either to
+Atticus or to others--it has to be remembered that in the ordinary
+arrangement of them made by Gręvius[138] they are often incorrectly
+paced in regard to chronology. In subsequent times efforts have been
+made to restore them to their proper position, and so they should be
+read. The letters to Atticus and those Ad Diversos have generally been
+published separately. For the ordinary purpose of literary pleasure they
+may perhaps be best read in that way. The tone of them is different. The
+great bulk of the correspondence is political, or quasi-political. The
+manner is much more familiar, much less severe--though not on that
+account indicating less seriousness--in those written to Atticus than in
+the others. With one or two signal exceptions, those to Atticus are
+better worth reading. The character of the writer may perhaps be best
+gathered from divided perusal; but for a general understanding of the
+facts of Cicero's life, the whole correspondence should be taken as it
+was written. It has been published in this shape as well as in the
+other, and will be used in this shape in my effort to portray the life
+of him who wrote them.[139]
+
+[Sidenote: B.C. 68, ętat. 39.]
+
+We have three letters written when he was thirty-eight, in the year
+after his Ędileship. In the first he tells his friend of the death of
+his cousin, Lucius Cicero, who had travelled with him into Sicily, and
+alludes to the disagreements which had taken place between Pomponia, the
+sister of Atticus, and her husband, Quintus Cicero--our Cicero's
+brother. Marcus, in all that he says of his brother, makes the best of
+him. That Quintus was a scholar and a man of parts there can be no
+doubt; one, too, who rose to high office in the Republic. But he was
+arrogant, of harsh temper, cruel to those dependent on him, and
+altogether unimbued with the humanity which was the peculiar
+characteristic of his brother. "When I found him to be in the wrong,"
+says Cicero, in his first letter, "I wrote to him as to a brother whom
+I loved; but as to one younger than myself, and whom I was bound to tell
+of his fault." As is usual with correspondents, half the letter is taken
+up with excuses for not writing sooner; then he gives commissions for
+the purchase of statues for his Tusculan villa, of which we now hear for
+the first time, and tells his friend how his wife, Terentia, sends her
+love, though she is suffering from the gout. Tullia also, the dear
+little Tullia, "delicię nostrę,"[140]sends her love. In the next, he
+says how a certain house which Atticus had intended to purchase had been
+secured by Fonteius for 130,000 sesterces--something over £1000, taking
+the sesterce at 2 _d_. This no doubt was part of the plunder which
+Fonteius had taken from the Gauls. Quintus is getting on better with his
+wife. Then he tells his friend very abruptly that his father died that
+year on the eighth day before the kalends of December--on the 24th of
+November. Some question as to the date of the old man's death had
+probably been asked. He gives further commissions as to statues, and
+declares of his Tusculan villa that he is happy only when he is there.
+In the third letter he promises that he will be ready to pay one Cincius
+£170 on a certain day, the price probably of more statues, and gives
+orders to his friend as to the buying of books. "All my prospect of
+enjoying myself at my ease depends on your goodness." These were the
+letters he wrote when he had just ceased to be Ędile.
+
+From the next two years five letters remain to us, chiefly noticeable
+from the continued commissions given by Cicero to Atticus for statues.
+Statues and more statues are wanted as ornaments for his Tusculanum.
+Should there be more than are needed for that villa, he will begin to
+decorate another that he has, the Formianum, near Caieta. He wants
+whatever Atticus may think proper for his "palęstra" and "gymnasium."
+Atticus has a library or collection of maps for sale, and Cicero engages
+to buy them, though it seems that he has not at present quite got the
+money. He reserves, he says, all his little comings-in,
+"vindemiolas"--what he might make by selling his grapes as a lady in the
+country might get a little income from her spare butter--in order that
+he may have books as a resource for his old age. Again, he bids Atticus
+not to be afraid but what he, Cicero, will be able to buy them some
+day--which if he can do he will be richer than Crassus, and will envy no
+one his mansions or his lawns. He also declares that he has betrothed
+Tullia, then ten years old, to Caius Piso, son of Lucius Piso Frugi. The
+proposed marriage, which after three years of betrothal was duly
+solemnized, was considered to be in all respects desirable. Cicero
+thought very highly of his son-in-law, who was related to Calpurnius
+Piso, one of the Consuls of that year. So far everything was going well
+with our orator.
+
+[Sidenote: B.C. 67, ętat. 40.]
+
+He was then candidate for the Prętorship, and was elected first, as has
+been already said. It was in that year, too that a law was passed in
+Rome, at the instance of one Gabinius, a tribune, authorizing Pompey to
+exterminate the pirates in the Mediterranean, and giving him almost
+unlimited power for this object. Pompey was not, indeed, named in this
+law. A single general, one who had been Consul, was to be approved by
+the Senate, with exclusive command by sea and for fifty miles on shore.
+He was to select as his own officers a hitherto unheard-of number, all
+of senatorial rank. It was well understood when the law was worded that
+Pompey alone could fill the place. The Senate opposed the scheme with
+all its power, although, seven years before, it had acknowledged the
+necessity of some measure for extirpating the pirates. But jealousies
+prevailed, and the Senate was afraid of Pompey. Gabinius, however,
+carried his law by the votes of the people, and Pompey was appointed.
+
+Nothing tells us more clearly the wretched condition of things in Rome
+at this time than this infliction of pirates, under which their commerce
+was almost destroyed. Sulla had re-established the outside show of a
+strong government--a government which was strong enough to enable rich
+men to live securely in Rome; but he had done nothing to consolidate the
+Empire. Even Lucullus in the East had only partially succeeded, leaving
+Mithridates still to be dealt with by Pompey. Of what nature was the
+government of the provinces under Sulla's aristocracy we learn from the
+trials of Verres, and of Fonteius, and of Catiline. The Mediterranean
+swarmed with pirates, who taught themselves to think that they had
+nothing to fear from the hands of the Romans. Plutarch declares to
+us--no doubt with fair accuracy, because the description has been
+admitted by subsequent writers--how great was the horror of these
+depredations.[141] It is marvellous to us now that this should have been
+allowed--marvellous that pirates should reach such a pitch of importance
+that Verres had found it worth his while to sacrifice Roman citizens in
+their place. Pompey went forth with his officers, his fleets, and his
+money, and cleared the Mediterranean in forty days, as Plutarch says.
+Floras tells us that not a ship was lost by the Romans, and not a pirate
+left on the seas.[142]
+
+In the history of Rome at this time we find men of mark whose
+characters, as we read, become clear to us, or appear to become clear.
+Of Marius and of Sulla we have a defined idea. Cęsar, with his
+imperturbable courage, absence of scruples, and assurance of success,
+comes home to us. Cicero, I think, we certainly may understand.
+Catiline, Cato, Antony, and Brutus have left their portraits with us. Of
+Pompey I must acknowledge for myself that I have but a vague conception.
+His wonderful successes seem to have been produced by so very little
+power of his own! He was not determined and venomous as was Marius; not
+cold-blooded and ruthless as was Sulla; certainly not confident as was
+Cęsar; not humane as was Cicero; not passionate as Catiline; not stoic
+as was Cato; not reckless as was Antony, nor wedded to the idea of an
+oligarchy as was Brutus. Success came in his way, and he found it--found
+it again and again, till fortune seemed to have adopted him. Success
+lifted him higher and higher, till at last it seemed to him that he must
+be a Sulla whether he would or no.[143] But he could not endure the idea
+of a rival Sulla. I doubt whether ambition would have prompted him to
+fight for the empire of the Republic, had he not perceived that that
+empire would fall into Cęsar's hands did he not grasp it himself. It
+would have satisfied him to let things go, while the citizens called him
+"Magnus," and regarded him as the man who could do a great thing if he
+would, if only no rivalship had been forced upon him. Cęsar did force it
+on him, and then, as a matter of course, he fell. He must have
+understood warfare from his youth upward, knowing well the purposes of a
+Roman legion and of Roman auxiliaries. He had destroyed Sertorius in
+Spain, a man certainly greater than himself, and had achieved the honor
+of putting an end to the Servile war when Spartacus, the leader of the
+slaves and gladiators, had already been killed. He must have appreciated
+at its utmost the meaning of those words, "Cives Romanus." He was a
+handsome man, with good health, patient of labor, not given to luxury,
+reticent, I should say ungenerous, and with a strong touch of vanity; a
+man able to express but unable to feel friendship; with none of the
+highest attributes of manhood, but with all the second-rate attributes
+at their best; a capable, brave man, but one certain to fall crushed
+beneath the heel of such a man as Cęsar, and as certain to leave such a
+one as Cicero in the lurch.
+
+It is necessary that the reader should attempt to realize to himself the
+personal characteristics of Pompey, as from this time forward Cicero's
+political life--and his life now became altogether political--was
+governed by that of Pompey. That this was the case to a great extent is
+certain--to a sad extent, I think. The two men were of the same age; but
+Pompey had become a general among soldiers before Cicero had ceased to
+be a pupil among advocates. As Cicero was making his way toward the
+front, Pompey was already the first among Romans. He had been Consul
+seven years before his proper time, and had lately, as we have seen,
+been invested with extraordinary powers in that matter of putting down
+the pirates. In some sort the mantle of Sulla had fallen upon him. He
+was the leader of what we may call the conservative party. If, which I
+doubt, the political governance of men was a matter of interest to him,
+he would have had them governed by oligarchical forms. Such had been the
+forms in Rome, in which, though the votes of the people were the source
+of all power, the votes hardly went further than the selection of this
+or that oligarch. Pompey no doubt felt the expediency of maintaining the
+old order of things, in the midst of which he had been born to high
+rank, and had achieved the topmost place either by fortune or by merit.
+For any heartfelt conviction as to what might be best for his country or
+his countrymen, in what way he might most surely use his power for the
+good of the citizens generally, we must, I think, look in vain to that
+Pompey whom history has handed down to us. But, of all matters which
+interested Cicero, the governance of men interested him the most. How
+should the great Rome of his day rise to greater power than ever, and
+yet be as poor as in the days of her comparative insignificance? How
+should Rome be ruled so that Romans might be the masters of the world,
+in mental gifts as well as bodily strength, in arts as well as in
+arms--as by valor, so by virtue? He, too, was an oligarch by strongest
+conviction. His mind could conceive nothing better than Consuls,
+Prętors, Censors, Tribunes, and the rest of it; with, however, the
+stipulation that the Consuls and the Prętors should be honest men. The
+condition was no doubt an impossible one; but this he did not or would
+not see. Pompey himself was fairly honest. Up to this time he had shown
+no egregious lust for personal power. His hands were clean in the midst
+of so much public plunder. He was the leader of the conservative party.
+The "Optimates," or "Boni," as Cicero indifferently calls them--meaning,
+as we should say, the upper classes, who were minded to stand by their
+order--believed in him, though they did not just at that time wish to
+confide to him the power which the people gave him. The Senate did not
+want another Sulla; and yet it was Sulla who had reinstated the Senate.
+The Senate would have hindered Pompey, if it could, from his command
+against the pirates, and again from his command against Mithridates. But
+he, nevertheless, was naturally their head, as came to be seen plainly
+when, seventeen years afterward, Cęsar passed the Rubicon, and Cicero in
+his heart acknowledged Pompey as his political leader while Pompey
+lived. This, I think, was the case to a sad extent, as Pompey was
+incapable of that patriotic enthusiasm which Cicero demanded. As we go
+on we shall find that the worst episodes in Cicero's political career
+were created by his doubting adherence to a leader whom he bitterly felt
+to be untrue to himself, and in whom his trust became weaker and weaker
+to the end.
+
+Then came Cicero's Prętorship. In the time of Cicero there were eight
+Prętors, two of whom were employed in the city, and the six others in
+the provinces. The "Prętor Urbanus" was confined to the city, and was
+regarded as the first in authority. This was the office filled by
+Cicero. His duty was to preside among the judges, and to name a judge or
+judges for special causes.
+
+[Sidenote: B.C. 66, ętat. 41.]
+
+Cicero at this time, when he and Pompey were forty or forty-one,
+believed thoroughly in Pompey. When the great General was still away,
+winding up the affairs of his maritime war against the pirates, there
+came up the continually pressing question of the continuation of the
+Mithridatic war. Lucullus had been absent on that business nearly seven
+years, and, though he had been at first grandly victorious, had failed
+at last. His own soldiers, tired of their protracted absence, mutinied
+against him, and Glabrio, a later Consul, who had been sent to take the
+command out of his hands, had feared to encounter the difficulty. It was
+essential that something should be done, and one Manilius, a Tribune, a
+man of no repute himself, but whose name has descended to all posterity
+in the oration Pro Lege Manilia, proposed to the people that Pompey
+should have the command. Then Cicero first entered, as we may say, on
+political life. Though he had been Quęstor and Ędile, and was now
+Prętor, he had taken a part only in executive administration. He had had
+his political ideas, and had expressed them very strongly in that matter
+of the judges, which, in the condition of Rome, was certainly a
+political question of great moment. But this he had done as an advocate,
+and had interfered only as a barrister of to-day might do, who, in
+arguing a case before the judges, should make an attack on some alleged
+misuse of patronage. Now, for the first time, he made a political
+harangue, addressing the people in a public meeting from the rostra.
+This speech is the oration Pro Lego Manilia. This he explains in his
+first words. Hitherto his addresses had been to the judges--Judices; now
+it is to the people--Quirites: "Although, Quirites, no sight has ever
+been so pleasant to me as that of seeing you gathered in
+crowds--although this spot has always seemed to me the fittest in the
+world for action and the noblest for speech--nevertheless, not my own
+will, indeed, but the duties of the profession which I have followed
+from my earliest years have hitherto hindered me from entering upon this
+the best path to glory which is open to any good man." It is only
+necessary for our purpose to say, in reference to the matter in
+question, that this command was given to Pompey in opposition to the
+Senate.
+
+As to the speech itself, it requires our attention on two points. It is
+one of those choice morsels of polished Latinity which have given to
+Cicero the highest rank among literary men, and have, perhaps, made him
+the greatest writer of prose which the world has produced. I have
+sometimes attempted to make a short list of his _chefs d'[oe]uvre_--of
+his tidbits, as I must say, if I am bound to express myself in English.
+The list would never allow itself to be short, and so has become almost
+impossible; but, whenever the attempt has been made, this short oration
+in its integrity has always been included in it. My space hardly permits
+me to insert specimens of the author's style, but I will give in an
+appendix[144] two brief extracts as specimens of the beauty of words in
+Latin. I almost fancy that if properly read they would have a grace
+about them even to the ears of those to whom Latin is unknown. I venture
+to attach to them in parallel columns my own translation, acknowledging
+in despair how impossible I have found it to catch anything of the
+rhythm of the author. As to the beauty of the language I shall probably
+find no opponent. But a serious attack has been made on Cicero's
+character, because it has been supposed that his excessive praise was
+lavished on Pompey with a view of securing the great General's
+assistance in his candidature for the Consulship. Even Middleton repeats
+this accusation, and only faintly repels it. M. Du Rozoir, the French
+critic, declares that "in the whole oration there is not a word which
+was not dictated to Cicero the Prętor by his desire to become Consul,
+and that his own elevation was in his thoughts all through, and not that
+of Pompey." The matter would be one to us but of little moment, were it
+not that Cicero's character for honesty as a politician depends on the
+truth or falsehood of his belief in Pompey. Pompey had been almost
+miraculously fortunate up to this period of his life's career. He had
+done infinitely valuable service to the State. He had already crushed
+the pirates. There was good ground for believing that in his hands the
+Roman arms would be more efficacious against Mithridates than in those
+of any other General. All that Cicero says on this head, whatever might
+have been his motive for saying it, was at any rate true.
+
+A man desirous of rising in the service of his country of course adheres
+to his party. That Cicero was wrong in supposing that the Republic,
+which had in fact already fallen, could be re-established by the
+strength of any one man, could be bolstered up by any leader, has to be
+admitted; that in trusting to Pompey as a politician he leaned on a
+frail reed I admit; but I will not admit that in praising the man he was
+hypocritical or unduly self-seeking. In our own political contests, when
+a subordinate member of the Cabinet is zealously serviceable to his
+chief, we do not accuse him of falsehood because by that zeal he has
+also strengthened his own hands. How shall a patriot do the work of his
+country unless he be in high place? and how shall he achieve that place
+except by co-operation with those whom he trusts? They who have blamed
+Cicero for speaking on behalf of Pompey on this occasion, seem to me to
+ignore not only the necessities but the very virtues of political life.
+
+One other remarkable oration Cicero made during his Prętorship--that,
+namely, in defence of Aulus Cluentius Habitus. As it is the longest, so
+is it the most intricate, and on account of various legal points the
+most difficult to follow of all his speeches. But there are none perhaps
+which tell us more of the condition, or perhaps I should say the
+possibilities, of life among the Romans of that day. The accusation
+against Roscius Amerinus was accompanied by horrible circumstances. The
+iniquities of Verres, as a public officer who had the power of blessing
+or of cursing a whole people, were very terrible; but they do not shock
+so much as the story here told of private life. That any man should have
+lived as did Oppianicus, or any woman as did Sassia, seems to prove a
+state of things worse than anything described by Juvenal a hundred and
+fifty years later. Cicero was no doubt unscrupulous as an advocate, but
+he could have gained nothing here by departing from verisimilitude. We
+must take the picture as given us as true, and acknowledge that, though
+law processes were common, crimes such as those of this man and of this
+woman were not only possible, but might be perpetrated with impunity.
+The story is too long and complicated to be even abridged; but it should
+be read by those who wish to know the condition of life in Italy during
+the latter days of the Republic.
+
+[Sidenote: B.C. 65, ętat. 42.]
+
+In the year after he was Prętor--in the first of the two years between
+his Prętorship and Consulship, B.C. 65--he made a speech in defence of
+one Caius Cornelius, as to which we hear that the pleadings in the case
+occupied four days. This, with our interminable "causes célčbres," does
+not seem much to us, but Cicero's own speech was so long that in
+publishing it he divided it into two parts. This Cornelius had been
+Tribune in the year but one before, and was accused of having misused
+his power when in office. He had incurred the enmity of the aristocracy
+by attempts made on the popular side to restrain the Senate; especially
+by the stringency of a law proposed for stopping bribery at elections.
+Cicero's speeches are not extant. We have only some hardly intelligible
+fragments of them, which were preserved by Asconius,[145] a commentator
+on certain of Cicero's orations; but there is ground for supposing that
+these Cornelian orations were at the time matter of as great moment as
+those spoken against Verres, or almost as those spoken against Catiline.
+Cicero defended Cornelius, who was attacked by the Senate--by the rich
+men who desired office and the government of provinces. The law proposed
+for the restriction of bribery at elections no doubt attempted to do
+more by the severity of its punishment than can be achieved by such
+means: it was mitigated, but was still admitted by Cicero to be too
+rigorous. The rancor of the Senate against Cornelius seems to have been
+due to this attempt; but the illegality with which he was charged, and
+for which he was tried, had reference to another law suggested by
+him--for restoring to the people the right of pardon which had been
+usurped by the Senate. Caius Cornelius seems to have been a man honest
+and eager in his purpose to save the Republic from the greed of the
+oligarchs, but--as had been the Gracchi--ready in his eagerness to push
+his own authority too far in his attempt to restrain that of the Senate.
+A second Tribune, in the interest of the Senate, attempted to exercise
+an authority which undoubtedly belonged to him, by inhibiting the
+publication or reading of the proposed law. The person whose duty it was
+to read it was stopped; then Cornelius pushed aside the inferior
+officer, and read it himself. There was much violence, and the men who
+brought the accusation about Cornelius--two brothers named Cominii--had
+to hide themselves, and saved their lives by escaping over the roofs of
+the houses.
+
+This took place when Cicero was standing for the Prętorship, and the
+confusion consequent upon it was so great that it was for awhile
+impossible to carry on the election. In the year after his Prętorship
+Cornelius was put upon his trial, and the two speeches were made.
+
+The matter seems to have been one of vital interest in Rome. The contest
+on the part of the Senate was for all that made public life dear to such
+a body. Not to bribe--not to be able to lay out money in order that
+money might be returned ten-fold, a hundred-fold--would be to them to
+cease to be aristocrats. The struggles made by the Gracchi, by Livius
+Drusus, by others whose names would only encumber us here, by this
+Cornelius, were the expiring efforts of those who really desired an
+honest Republic. Such were the struggles made by Cicero himself; though
+there was present always to him an idea, with which, in truth, neither
+the demagogues nor the aristocrats sympathized, that the reform could be
+effected, not by depriving the Senate of its power, but by teaching the
+Senate to use it honestly. We can sympathize with the idea, but we are
+driven to acknowledge that it was futile.
+
+Though we know that this was so, the fragments of the speeches, though
+they have been made intelligible to us by the "argument" or story of
+them prefixed by Asconius in his notes, cannot be of interest to
+readers. They were extant in the time of Quintilian, who speaks of them
+with the highest praise.[146] Cicero himself selects certain passages
+out of these speeches as examples of eloquence or rhythm,[147] thus
+showing the labor with which he composed them, polishing them by the
+exercise of his ear as well as by that of his intellect. We know from
+Asconius that this trial was regarded at the time as one of vital
+interest.
+
+We have two letters from Cicero written in the year after his
+Prętorship, both to Atticus, the first of which tells us of his probable
+competition for the Consulship; the second informs his friend that a son
+is born to him--he being then forty-two years old--and that he is
+thinking to undertake the defence of Catiline, who was to be accused of
+peculation as Proprętor in Africa. "Should he be acquitted," says
+Cicero, "I should hope to have him on my side in the matter of my
+canvass. If he should be convicted, I shall be able to bear that too."
+There were to be six or seven candidates, of whom two, of course, would
+be chosen. It would be much to Cicero "to run," as our phrase goes, with
+the one who among his competitors would be the most likely to succeed.
+Catiline, in spite of his then notorious character--in the teeth of the
+evils of his government in Africa--was, from his birth, his connections,
+and from his ability, supposed to have the best chance. It was open to
+Cicero to defend Catiline as he had defended Fonteius, and we know from
+his own words that he thought of doing so. But he did not; nor did
+Cicero join himself with Catiline in the canvassing. It is probable that
+the nature of Catiline's character and intentions were now becoming
+clearer from day to day. Catiline was tried and acquitted, having, it is
+said, bribed the judges.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+_CICERO AS CONSUL._
+
+
+Hitherto everything had succeeded with Cicero. His fortune and his fame
+had gone hand-in-hand. The good-will of the citizens had been accorded
+to him on all possible occasions. He had risen surely, if not quickly,
+to the top of his profession, and had so placed himself there as to have
+torn the wreath from the brow of his predecessor and rival, Hortensius.
+On no memorable occasion had he been beaten. If now and then he had
+failed to win a cause in which he was interested, it was as to some
+matter in which, as he had said to Atticus in speaking of his
+contemplated defence of Catiline, he was not called on to break his
+heart if he were beaten. We may imagine that his life had been as happy
+up to this point as a man's life may be. He had married well. Children
+had been born to him, who were the source of infinite delight. He had
+provided himself with houses, marbles, books, and all the intellectual
+luxuries which well-used wealth could produce. Friends were thick around
+him. His industry, his ability, and his honesty were acknowledged. The
+citizens had given him all that it was in their power to give. Now at
+the earliest possible day, with circumstances of much more than usual
+honor, he was put in the highest place which his country had to offer,
+and knew himself to be the one man in whom his country at this moment
+trusted. Then came the one twelve-month, the apex of his fortunes; and
+after that, for the twenty years that followed, there fell upon him one
+misery after another--one trouble on the head of another trouble--so
+cruelly that the reader, knowing the manner of the Romans, almost
+wonders that he condescended to live.
+
+[Sidenote: B.C. 64, ętat. 43.]
+
+He was chosen Consul, we are told, not by the votes but by the unanimous
+acclamation of the citizens. What was the exact manner of doing this we
+can hardly now understand. The Consuls were elected by ballot, wooden
+tickets having been distributed to the people for the purpose; but
+Cicero tells us that no voting tickets were used in his case, but that
+he was elected by the combined voice of the whole people.[148]
+
+He had stood with six competitors. Of these it is only necessary to
+mention two, as by them only was Cicero's life affected, and as out of
+the six, only they seem to have come prominently forward during the
+canvassing. These were Catiline the conspirator, as we shall have to
+call him in dealing with his name in the next chapter, and Caius
+Antonius, one of the sons of Marc Antony, the great orator of the
+preceding age, and uncle of the Marc Antony with whom we are all so well
+acquainted, and with whom we shall have so much to do before we get to
+the end of this work. Cicero was so easily the first that it may be said
+of him that he walked over the course. Whether this was achieved by the
+Machiavellian arts which his brother Quintus taught in his treatise De
+Petitione Consulatus, or was attributable to his general popularity, may
+be a matter of doubt. As far as we can judge from the signs which remain
+to us of the public feeling of the period, it seems that he was at this
+time regarded with singular affection by his countrymen. He had robbed
+none, and had been cruel to no one. He had already abandoned the profit
+of provincial government--to which he was by custom entitled after the
+lapse of his year's duty as Prętor--in order that he might remain in
+Rome among the people. Though one of the Senate himself--and full of the
+glory of the Senate, as he had declared plainly enough in that passage
+from one of the Verrine orations which I have quoted--he had generally
+pleaded on the popular side. Such was his cleverness, that even when on
+the unpopular side--as he may be supposed to have been when defending
+Fonteius--he had given a popular aspect to the cause in hand. We cannot
+doubt, judging from the loud expression of the people's joy at his
+election, that he had made himself beloved But, nevertheless, he omitted
+none of those cares which it was expected that a candidate should take.
+He made his electioneering speech "in toga candida"--in a white robe, as
+candidates did, and were thence so called. It has not come down to us,
+nor do we regret it, judging from the extracts which have been collected
+from the notes which Asconius wrote upon it. It was full of personal
+abuse of Antony and Catiline, his competitors. Such was the practice of
+Rome at this time, as it was also with us not very long since. We shall
+have more than enough of such eloquence before we have done our task.
+When we come to the language in which Cicero spoke of Clodius, his
+enemy, of Piso and Gabinius, the Consuls who allowed him to be banished,
+and of Marc Antony, his last great opponent--the nephew of the man who
+was now his colleague--we shall have very much of it. It must again be
+pleaded that the foul abuse which fell from other lips has not been
+preserved and that Cicero, therefore, must not be supposed to have been
+more foul mouthed than his rivals. We can easily imagine that he was
+more bitter than others, because he had more power to throw into his
+words the meaning which he intended them to convey.
+
+Antony was chosen as Cicero's colleague. It seems, from such evidence as
+we are able to get on the subject, that Cicero trusted Antony no better
+than he did Catiline, but, appreciating the wisdom of the maxim, "divide
+et impera"--separate your enemies and you will get the better of them,
+which was no doubt known as well then as now--he soon determined to use
+Antony as his ally against Catiline, who was presumed to reckon Antony
+among his fellow-conspirators. Sallust puts into the mouth of Catiline a
+declaration to this effect,[149] and Cicero did use Antony for the
+purpose. The story of Catiline's conspiracy is so essentially the story
+of Cicero's Consulship, that I may be justified in hurrying over the
+other events of his year's rule; but still there is something that must
+be told. Though Catiline's conduct was under his eye during the whole
+year, it was not till October that the affairs in which we shall have to
+interest ourselves commenced.
+
+Of what may have been the nature of the administrative work done by the
+great Roman officers of State we know very little; perhaps I might
+better say that we know nothing. Men, in their own diaries, when they
+keep them, or even in their private letters, are seldom apt to say much
+of those daily doings which are matter of routine to themselves, and are
+by them supposed to be as little interesting to others. A Prime-minister
+with us, were he as prone to reveal himself in correspondence as was
+Cicero with his friend Atticus, would hardly say when he went to the
+Treasury Chambers or what he did when he got there. We may imagine that
+to a Cabinet Minister even a Cabinet Council would, after many sittings,
+become a matter of course. A leading barrister would hardly leave behind
+him a record of his work in chambers. It has thus come to pass that,
+though we can picture to ourselves a Cicero before the judges, or
+addressing the people from the rostra, or uttering his opinion in the
+Senate, we know nothing of him as he sat in his office and did his
+consular work. We cannot but suppose that there must have been an office
+with many clerks. There must have been heavy daily work. The whole
+operation of government was under the Consul's charge, and to Cicero,
+with a Catiline on his hands, this must have been more than usually
+heavy. How he did it, with what assistance, sitting at what
+writing-table, dressed in what robes, with what surroundings of archives
+and red tape, I cannot make manifest to myself. I can imagine that there
+must have been much of dignity, as there was with all leading Romans,
+but beyond that I cannot advance even in fancying what was the official
+life of a Consul.
+
+In the old days the Consul used, as a matter of course, to go out and do
+the fighting. When there was an enemy here, or an enemy there, the
+Consul was bound to hurry off with his army, north or south, to
+different parts of Italy. But gradually this system became
+impracticable. Distances became too great, as the Empire extended itself
+beyond the bounds of Italy, to admit of the absence of the Consuls. Wars
+prolonged themselves through many campaigns, as notably did that which
+was soon to take place in Gaul under Cęsar. The Consuls remained at
+home, and Generals were sent out with proconsular authority. This had
+become so certainly the case, that Cicero on becoming Consul had no fear
+of being called on to fight the enemies of his country. There was much
+fighting then in course of being done by Pompey in the East; but this
+would give but little trouble to the great officers at home, unless it
+might be in sending out necessary supplies.
+
+The Consul's work, however, was severe enough. We find from his own
+words, in a letter to Atticus written in the year but one after his
+Consulship, 61 B.C., that as Consul he made twelve public addresses.
+Each of them must have been a work of labor, requiring a full mastery
+over the subject in hand, and an arrangement of words very different in
+their polished perfection from the generality of parliamentary speeches
+to which we are accustomed. The getting up of his cases must have taken
+great time. Letters went slowly and at a heavy cost. Writing must have
+been tedious when that most common was done with a metal point on soft
+wax. An advocate who was earnest in a case had to do much for himself.
+We have heard how Cicero made his way over to Sicily, creeping in a
+little boat through the dangers prepared for him, in order that he might
+get up the evidence against Verres. In defending Aulus Cluentius when he
+was Prętor, Cicero must have found the work to have been immense. In
+preparing the attack upon Catiline it seems that every witness was
+brought to himself. There were four Catiline speeches made in the year
+of his Consulship, but in the same year many others were delivered by
+him. He mentions, as we shall see just now, twelve various speeches made
+in the year of his Consulship.
+
+I imagine that the words spoken can in no case have been identical with
+those which have come to us--which were, as we may say, prepared for the
+press by Tiro, his slave and secretary. We have evidence as to some of
+them, especially as to the second Catiline oration, that time did not
+admit of its being written and learned by heart after the occurrence of
+the circumstances to which it alludes. It needs must have been
+extemporary, with such mental preparation as one night may have sufficed
+to give him. How the words may have been taken down in such a case we do
+not quite know; but we are aware that short-hand writers were employed,
+though there can hardly have been a science of stenography perfected as
+is that with us.[150] The words which we read were probably much
+polished before they were published, but how far this was done we do not
+know. What we do know is that the words which he spoke moved, convinced,
+and charmed those who heard them, as do the words we read move, convince
+and charm us. Of these twelve consular speeches Cicero gives a special
+account to his friend. "I will send you," he says, "the speechlings[151]
+which you require, as well as some others, seeing that those which I
+have written out at the request of a few young men please you also. It
+was an advantage to me here to follow the example of that fellow-citizen
+of yours in those orations which he called his Philippics. In these he
+brightened himself up, and discarded his 'nisi prius' way of speaking,
+so that he might achieve something more dignified, something more
+statesman-like. So I have done with these speeches of mine which may be
+called 'consulares,'" as having been made not only in his consular year
+but also with something of consular dignity. "Of these, one, on the new
+land laws proposed, was spoken in the Senate on the kalends of January.
+The second, on the same subject, to the people. The third was respecting
+Otho's law.[152] The fourth was in defence of Rabirius.[153] The fifth
+was in reference to the children of those who had lost their property
+and their rank under Sulla's proscription.[154] The sixth was an address
+to the people, and explained why I renounced my provincial
+government.[155] The seventh drove Catiline out of the city. The eighth
+was addressed to the people the day after Catiline fled. The ninth was
+again spoken to the people, on the day on which the Allobroges gave
+their evidence. Then, again, the tenth was addressed to the Senate on
+the fifth of December"--also respecting Catiline. "There are also two
+short supplementary speeches on the Agrarian war. You shall have the
+whole body of them. As what I write and what I do are equally
+interesting to you, you will gather from the same documents all my
+doings and all my sayings."
+
+It is not to be supposed that in this list are contained all the
+speeches which he made in his consular year, but those only which he
+made as Consul--those to which he was desirous of adding something of
+the dignity of statesmanship, something beyond the weight attached to
+his pleadings as a lawyer. As an advocate, Consul though he was, he
+continued to perform his work; from whence we learn that no State
+dignity was so high as to exempt an established pleader from the duty of
+defending his friends. Hortensius, when Consul elect, had undertaken to
+defend Verres. Cicero defended Murena when he was Consul. He defended C.
+Calpurnius Piso also, who was accused, as were so many, of proconsular
+extortion; but whether in this year or in the preceding is not, I think,
+known.[156] Of his speech on that occasion we have nothing remaining. Of
+his pleading for Murena we have, if not the whole, the material part,
+and, though nobody cares very much for Murena now, the oration is very
+amusing. It was made toward the end of the year, on the 20th of
+November, after the second Catiline oration, and before the third, at
+the very moment in which Cicero was fully occupied with the evidence on
+which he intended to convict Catiline's fellow-conspirators. As I read
+it I am carried away by wonder, rather than admiration, at the energy of
+the man who could at such a period of his life give up his time to
+master the details necessary for the trial of Murena.
+
+Early in the year Cicero had caused a law to be passed--which, after
+him, was called the Lex Tullia--increasing the stringency of the
+enactments against bribery on the part of consular candidates. His
+intention had probably been to hinder Catiline, who was again about to
+become a candidate. But Murena, who was elected, was supposed to have
+been caught in the meshes of the net, and also Silanus, the other Consul
+designate. Cato, the man of stern nature, the great Stoic of the day,
+was delighted to have an opportunity of proceeding against some one, and
+not very sorry to attack Murena with weapons provided from the armory of
+Murena's friend, Cicero. Silanus, however, who happened to be cousin to
+Cato, was allowed to pass unmolested. Sulpicius, who was one of the
+disappointed candidates, Cato, and Postumius were the accusers.
+Hortensius, Crassus, and Cicero were combined together for the defence
+of Murena. But as we read the single pleading that has come to us, we
+feel that, unlike those Roman trials generally, this was carried on
+without any acrimony on either side. I think it must have been that Cato
+wished to have an opportunity of displaying his virtue, but it had been
+arranged that Murena was to be acquitted. Murena was accused, among
+other things, of dancing! Greeks might dance, as we hear from Cornelius
+Nepos,[157] but for a Roman Consul it would be disgraceful in the
+highest extreme. A lady, indeed, might dance, but not much. Sallust
+tells us of Sempronia--who was, indeed, a very bad female if all that he
+says of her be true--that she danced more elegantly than became an
+honest woman.[158] She was the wife of a Consul. But a male Roman of
+high standing might not dance at all. Cicero defends his friend by
+showing how impossible it was--how monstrous the idea. "No man would
+dance unless drunk or mad." Nevertheless, I imagine that Murena had
+danced.
+
+Cicero seizes an opportunity of quizzing Cato for his stoicism, and uses
+it delightfully. Horace was not more happy when, in defence of
+Aristippus, he declared that any philosopher would turn up his nose at
+cabbage if he could get himself asked to the tables of rich men.[159]
+"There was one Zeno," Cicero says, "who laid down laws. No wise man
+would forgive any fault. No man worthy of the name of man would allow
+himself to be pitiful. Wise men are beautiful, even though deformed;
+rich though penniless; kings though they be slaves. We who are not wise
+are mere exiles, runagates, enemies of our country, and madmen. Any
+fault is an unpardonable crime. To kill an old cock, if you do not want
+it, is as bad as to murder your father!"[160] And these doctrines, he
+goes on to say, which are used by most of us merely as something to talk
+about, this man Cato absolutely believes, and tries to live by them. I
+shall have to refer back to this when I speak of Cicero's philosophy
+more at length; but his common-sense crops up continually in the
+expressions which he uses for defending the ordinary conditions of a
+man's life, in opposition to that impossible superiority to mundane
+things which the philosophers professed to teach their pupils. He turns
+to Cato and asks him questions, which he answers himself with his own
+philosophy: "Would you pardon nothing? Well, yes; but not all things.
+Would you do nothing for friendship? Sometimes, unless duty should stand
+in the way. Would you never be moved to pity? I would maintain my habit
+of sincerity, but something must no doubt be allowed to humanity. It is
+good to stick to your opinion, but only until some better opinion shall
+have prevailed with you." In all this the humanity of our Cicero, as
+opposed equally to the impossible virtue of a Cato or the abominable
+vice of a Verres, is in advance of his age, and reminds us of what
+Christ has taught us.
+
+But the best morsel in the whole oration is that in which he snubs the
+lawyers. It must be understood that Cicero did not pride himself on
+being a lawyer. He was an advocate, and if he wanted law there were
+those of an inferior grade to whom he could go to get it. In truth, he
+did understand the law, being a man of deep research, who inquired into
+everything. As legal points had been raised, he thus addresses
+Sulpicius, who seems to have affected a knowledge of jurisprudence, who
+had been a candidate for the Consulship, and who was his own intimate
+friend: "I must put you out of your conceit," he says; "it was your
+other gifts, not a knowledge of the laws--your moderation, your wisdom,
+your justice--which, in my opinion, made you worthy of being loved. I
+will not say you threw away your time in studying law, but it was not
+thus you made yourself worthy of the Consulship.[161] That power of
+eloquence, majestic and full of dignity which has so often availed in
+raising a man to the Consulship, is able by its words to move the minds
+of the Senate and the people and the judges.[162] But in such a poor
+science as that of law what honor can there be? Its details are taken up
+with mere words and fragments of words.[163] They forget all equity in
+points of law, and stick to the mere letter."[164] He goes through a
+presumed scene of chicanery, which, Consul as he was, he must have acted
+before the judges and the people, no doubt to the extreme delight of
+them all. At last he says, "Full as I am of business, if you raise my
+wrath I will make myself a lawyer, and learn it all in three days."[165]
+From these and many other passages in Cicero's writings and speeches,
+and also from Quintilian, we learn that a Roman advocate was by no
+means the same as an English barrister. The science which he was
+supposed to have learned was simply that of telling his story in
+effective language. It no doubt came to pass that he had much to do in
+getting up the details of his story--what we may call the evidence--but
+he looked elsewhere, to men of another profession, for his law. The
+"juris consultus" or the "juris peritus" was the lawyer, and as such was
+regarded as being of much less importance than the "patronus" or
+advocate, who stood before the whole city and pleaded the cause. In this
+trial of Murena, who was by trade a soldier, it suited Cicero to
+belittle lawyers and to extol the army. When he is telling Sulpicius
+that it was not by being a lawyer that a man could become Consul, he
+goes on to praise the high dignity of his client's profession. "The
+greatest glory is achieved by those who excel in battle. All our empire,
+all our republic, is defended and made strong by them."[166] It was thus
+that the advocate could speak! This comes from the man who always took
+glory to himself in declaring that the "toga" was superior to helmet and
+shield. He had already declared that they erred who thought that they
+were going to get his own private opinion in speeches made in law
+courts.[167] He knew how to defend his friend Murena, who was a soldier,
+and in doing so could say very sharp things, though yet in joke, against
+his friend Sulpicius, the lawyer. But in truth few men understood the
+Roman law better than did Cicero.
+
+But we must go back to that agrarian law respecting which, as he tells
+us, four of his consular speeches were made. This had been brought
+forward by Rullus, one of the Tribunes, toward the end of the last year.
+The Tribunes came into office in December, whereas at this period of the
+Republic the Consuls were in power only on and from January 1st. Cicero,
+who had been unable to get the particulars of the new law till it had
+been proclaimed, had but a few days to master its details. It was, to
+his thinking, altogether revolutionary. We have the words of many of the
+clauses; and though it is difficult at this distance of time to realize
+what would have been its effect, I think we are entitled to say that it
+was intended to subvert all property. Property, speaking of it
+generally, cannot be destroyed The land remains, and the combined
+results of man's industry are too numerous, too large, and too lasting
+to become a wholesale prey to man's anger or madness. Even the elements
+when out of order can do but little toward perfecting destruction. A
+deluge is wanted--or that crash of doom which, whether it is to come or
+not, is believed by the world to be very distant. But it is within human
+power to destroy possession, and redistribute the goods which industry,
+avarice, or perhaps injustice has congregated. They who own property are
+in these days so much stronger than those who have none, that an idea of
+any such redistribution does not create much alarm among the possessors.
+The spirit of communism does not prevail among people who have learned
+that it is, in truth, easier to earn than to steal. But with the Romans
+political economy had naturally not advanced so far as with us. A
+subversion of property had to a great extent taken place no later than
+in Sulla's time. How this had been effected the story of the property of
+Roscius Amerinus has explained to us. Under Sulla's enactments no man
+with a house, with hoarded money, with a family of slaves, with rich
+ornaments, was safe. Property had been made to change hands recklessly,
+ruthlessly, violently, by the illegal application of a law promulgated
+by a single individual, who, however, had himself been instigated by no
+other idea than that of re-establishing the political order of things
+which he approved. Rullus, probably with other motives, was desirous of
+effecting a subversion which, though equally great, should be made
+altogether in a different direction. The ostensible purpose was
+something as follows: as the Roman people had by their valor and wisdom
+achieved for Rome great victories, and therefore great wealth, they, as
+Roman citizens, were entitled to the enjoyment of what they had won;
+whereas, in fact, the sweets of victory fell to the lot only of a few
+aristocrats. For the reform of this evil it should be enacted that all
+public property which had been thus acquired, whether land or chattels,
+should be sold, and with the proceeds other lands should be bought fit
+for the use of Roman citizens, and be given to those who would choose to
+have it. It was specially suggested that the rich country called the
+Campania--that in which Naples now stands with its adjacent
+isles--should be bought up and given over to a great Roman colony. For
+the purpose of carrying out this law ten magistrates should be
+appointed, with plenipotentiary power both as to buying and selling.
+There were many underplots in this. No one need sell unless he chose to
+sell; but at this moment much land was held by no other title than that
+of Sulla's proscriptions. The present possessors were in daily fear of
+dispossession, by some new law made with the object of restoring their
+property to those who had been so cruelly robbed. These would be very
+glad to get any price in hand for land of which their tenure was so
+doubtful; and these were the men whom the "decemviri," or ten
+magistrates, would be anxious to assist. We are told that the
+father-in-law of Rullus himself had made a large acquisition by his use
+of Sulla's proscriptions. And then there would be the instantaneous
+selling of the vast districts obtained by conquest and now held by the
+Roman State. When so much land would be thrown into the market it would
+be sold very cheap and would be sold to those whom the "decemviri" might
+choose to favor. We can hardly now hope to unravel all the intended
+details, but we may be sure that the basis on which property stood would
+have been altogether changed by the measure. The "decemviri" were to
+have plenary power for ten years. All the taxes in all the provinces
+were to be sold, or put up to market. Everything supposed to belong to
+the Roman State was to be sold in every province, for the sake of
+collecting together a huge sum of money, which was to be divided in the
+shape of land among the poorer Romans. Whatever may have been the
+private intentions of Rullus, whether good or bad, it is evident, even
+at this distance of time, that a redistribution of property was intended
+which can only be described as a general subversion. To this the new
+Consul opposed himself vehemently, successfully, and, we must needs say,
+patriotically.
+
+The intense interest which Cicero threw into his work is as manifest in
+these agrarian orations as in those subsequently made as to the Catiline
+conspiracy. He ascends in his energy to a dignity of self-praise which
+induces the reader to feel that a man who could so speak of himself
+without fear of contradiction had a right to assert the supremacy of his
+own character and intellect. He condescends, on the other hand, to a
+virulence of personal abuse against Rullus which, though it is to our
+taste offensive, is, even to us, persuasive, making us feel that such a
+man should not have undertaken such a work. He is describing the way in
+which the bill was first introduced: "Our Tribunes at last enter upon
+their office. The harangue to be made by Rullus is especially expected.
+He is the projector of the law, and it was expected that he would carry
+himself with an air of special audacity. When he was only Tribune elect
+he began to put on a different countenance, to speak with a different
+voice, to walk with a different step. We all saw how he appeared with
+soiled raiment, with his person uncared for, and foul with dirt, with
+his hair and beard uncombed and untrimmed."[168] In Rome men under
+afflictions, particularly if under accusation, showed themselves in
+soiled garments so as to attract pity, and the meaning here is that
+Rullus went about as though under grief at the condition of his poor
+fellow-citizens, who were distressed by the want of this agrarian law.
+No description could be more likely to turn an individual into ridicule
+than this of his taking upon himself to represent in his own person the
+sorrows of the city. The picture of the man with the self-assumed
+garments of public woe, as though he were big enough to exhibit the
+grief of all Rome, could not but be effective. It has been supposed that
+Cicero was insulting the Tribune because he was dirty. Not so. He was
+ridiculing Rullus because Rullus had dared to go about in
+mourning--"sordidatus"--on behalf of his country.
+
+But the tone in which Cicero speaks of himself is magnificent. It is so
+grand as to make us feel that a Consul of Rome, who had the cares of
+Rome on his shoulders, was entitled to declare his own greatness to the
+Senate and to the people. There are the two important orations--that
+spoken first in the Senate, and then the speech to the people from which
+I have already quoted the passage personal to Rullus. In both of them he
+declares his own idea of a Consul, and of himself as Consul. He has been
+speaking of the effect of the proposed law on the revenues of the State,
+and then proceeds: "But I pass by what I have to say on that matter and
+reserve it for the people. I speak now of the danger which menaces our
+safety and our liberty. For what will there be left to us untouched in
+the Republic, what will remain of your authority and freedom, when
+Rullus, and those whom you fear much more than Rullus,[169] with this
+band of ready knaves, with all the rascaldom of Rome, laden with gold
+and silver, shall have seized on Capua and all the cities round? To all
+this, Senators"--Patres conscripti he calls them--"I will oppose what
+power I have. As long as I am Consul I will not suffer them to carry out
+their designs against the Republic.
+
+"But you, Rullus, and those who are with you, have been mistaken
+grievously in supposing that you will be regarded as friends of the
+people in your attempts to subvert the Republic in opposition to a
+Consul who is known in very truth to be the people's friend I call upon
+you, I invite you to meet me in the assembly. Let us have the people of
+Rome as a judge between us. Let us look round and see what it is that
+the people really desire. We shall find that there is nothing so dear to
+them as peace and quietness and ease. You have handed over the city to
+me full of anxiety, depressed with fear, disturbed by these projected
+laws and seditious assemblies." (It must be remembered that he had only
+on that very day begun his Consulship) "The wicked you have filled with
+hope, the good with fear. You have robbed the Forum of loyalty and the
+Republic of dignity. But now, when in the midst of these troubles of
+mind and body, when in this great darkness the voice and the authority
+of the Consul has been heard by the people--when he shall have made it
+plain that there is no cause for fear, that no strange army shall enroll
+itself, no bands collect themselves; that there shall be no new
+colonies, no sale of the revenue, no altered empire, no royal
+'decemvirs,' no second Rome, no other centre of rule but this; that while
+I am Consul there shall be perfect peace, perfect ease--do you suppose
+that I shall dread the superior popularity of your new agrarian law?
+Shall I, do you think, be afraid to hold my own against you in an
+assembly of the citizens when I shall have exposed the iniquity of your
+designs, the fraud of this law, the plots which your Tribunes of the
+people, popular as they think themselves, have contrived against the
+Roman people? Shall I fear--I who have determined to be Consul after
+that fashion in which alone a man may do so in dignity and freedom,
+reaching to ask nothing for myself which any Tribune could object to
+have given to me?"[170]
+
+This was to the Senate, but he is bolder still when he addresses the
+people. He begins by reminding them that it has always been the custom
+of the great officers of state, who have enjoyed the right of having in
+their houses the busts and images of their ancestors, in their first
+speech to the people to join with thanks for the favors done to
+themselves some records of the noble deeds done by their forefathers.
+[171] He, however, could do nothing of the kind: he had no such right:
+none in his family had achieved such dignity. To speak of himself might
+seem too proud, but to be silent would be ungrateful. Therefore would he
+restrain himself, but would still say something, so that he might
+acknowledge what he had received. Then he would leave it for them to
+judge whether he had deserved what they had done for him.
+
+"It is long ago--almost beyond the memory of us now here--since you last
+made a new man Consul.[172] That high office the nobles had reserved for
+themselves, and defended it, as it were, with ramparts. You have secured
+it for me, so that in future it shall be open to any who may be worthy
+of it. Nor have you only made me a Consul, much as that is, but you have
+done so in such a fashion that but few among the old nobles have been so
+treated, and no new man--'novus ante me nemo.' I have, if you will think
+of it, been the only new man who has stood for the Consulship in the
+first year in which it was legal, and who has got it." Then he goes on
+to remind them, in words which I have quoted before, that they had
+elected him by their unanimous voices. All this, he says, had been very
+grateful to him, but he had quite understood that it had been done that
+he might labor on their behalf. That such labor was severe, he declares.
+The Consulship itself must be defended. His period of Consulship to any
+Consul must be a year of grave responsibility, but more so to him than
+to any other. To him, should he be in doubt, the great nobles would give
+no kind advice. To him, should he be overtasked, they would give no
+assistance. But the first thing he would look for should be their good
+opinion. To declare now, before the people, that he would exercise his
+office for the good of the people was his natural duty. But in that
+place, in which it was difficult to speak after such a fashion, in the
+Senate itself, on the very first day of his Consulship, he had declared
+the same thing--"popularem me futurum esse consulem."[173]
+
+The course he had to pursue was noble, but very difficult. He desired,
+certainly, to be recognized as a friend of the people, but he desired so
+to befriend them that he might support also at the same time the power
+of the aristocracy. He still believed, as we cannot believe now, that
+there was a residuum of good in the Senate sufficient to blossom forth
+into new powers of honest government. When speaking to the oligarchs in
+the Senate of Rullus and his land law, it was easy enough to carry them
+with him. That a Consul should oppose a Tribune who was coming forward
+with a "Lex agraria" in his hands, as the latest disciple of the
+Gracchi, was not out of the common order of things. Another Consul would
+either have looked for popularity and increased power of plundering, as
+Antony might have done, or have stuck to his order, as he would have
+called it--as might have been the case with the Cottas, Lepiduses and
+Pisos of preceding years. But Cicero determined to oppose the demagogue
+Tribune by proving himself to the people to be more of a demagogue than
+he. He succeeded, and Rullus with his agrarian law was sent back into
+darkness. I regard the second speech against Rullus as the _ne plus
+ultra_, the very _beau ideal_ of a political harangue to the people on
+the side of order and good government.
+
+I cannot finish this chapter, in which I have attempted to describe the
+lesser operations of Cicero's Consulship, without again alluding to the
+picture drawn by Virgil of a great man quelling the storms of a
+seditious rising by the gravity of his presence and the weight of his
+words.[174] The poet surely had in his memory some occasion in which had
+taken place this great triumph of character and intellect combined. When
+the knights, during Cicero's Consulship essayed to take their privileged
+places in the public theatre, in accordance with a law passed by Roscius
+Otho a few years earlier (B.C. 68), the founder of the obnoxious law
+himself entered the building. The people, enraged against a man who had
+interfered with them and their pleasures, and who had brought them, as
+it were under new restraints from the aristocracy, arose in a body and
+began to break everything that came to hand. "Tum pietate gravem!" The
+Consul was sent for. He called on the people to follow him out of the
+theatre to the Temple of Bellona, and there addressed to them that
+wonderful oration by which they were sent away not only pacified but in
+good-humor with Otho himself. "Iste regit dictis animos et pectora
+mulcet." I have spoken of Pliny's eulogy as to the great Consul's doings
+of the year. The passage is short and I will translate it:[175] "But,
+Marcus Tullius, how shall I reconcile it to myself to be silent as to
+you, or by what special glory shall I best declare your excellence? How
+better than by referring to the grand testimony given to you by the
+whole nation, and to the achievements of your Consulship as a specimen
+of your entire life? At your voice the tribes gave up their agrarian
+law, which was as the very bread in their mouths. At your persuasion
+they pardoned Otho his law and bore with good-humor the difference of
+the seats assigned to them. At your prayer the children of the
+proscribed forbore from demanding their rights of citizenship. Catiline
+was put to flight by your skill and eloquence. It was you who
+silenced[176] M. Antony. Hail, thou who wert first addressed as the
+father of your country--the first who, in the garb of peace, hast
+deserved a triumph and won the laurel wreath of eloquence." This was
+grand praise to be spoken of a man more than a hundred years after his
+death, by one who had no peculiar sympathies with him other than those
+created by literary affinity.
+
+None of Cicero's letters have come to us from the year of his
+Consulship.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+_CATILINE._
+
+
+To wash the blackamoor white has been the favorite task of some modern
+historians. To find a paradox in character is a relief to the
+investigating mind which does not care to walk always in the well-tried
+paths, or to follow the grooves made plain and uninteresting by earlier
+writers. Tiberius and even Nero have been praised. The memories of our
+early years have been shocked by instructions to regard Richard III. and
+Henry VIII. as great and scrupulous kings. The devil may have been
+painted blacker than he should be, and the minds of just men, who will
+not accept the verdict of the majority, have been much exercised to put
+the matter right. We are now told that Catiline was a popular hero;
+that, though he might have wished to murder Cicero, he was, in
+accordance with the practice of his days, not much to be blamed for
+that; and that he was simply the follower of the Gracchi, and the
+forerunner of Cęsar in his desire to oppose the oligarchy of Rome.[177]
+In this there is much that is true. Murder was common. He who had seen
+the Sullan proscriptions, as both Catiline and Cicero had done, might
+well have learned to feel less scrupulous as to blood than we do in
+these days. Even Cicero, who of all the Romans was the most humane--even
+he, no doubt, would have been well contented that Catiline should have
+been destroyed by the people.[178] Even he was the cause, as we shall
+see just now, of the execution of the leaders of the conspirators whom
+Catiline left behind him in the city--an execution of which the legality
+is at any rate very doubtful. But in judging even of bloodshed we have
+to regard the circumstances of the time in the verdicts we give. Our
+consciousness of altered manners and of the growth of gentleness force
+this upon us. We cannot execrate the conspirators who murdered Cęsar as
+we would do those who might now plot the death of a tyrant; nor can we
+deal as heavily with the murderers of Cęsar as we would have done then
+with Catilinarian conspirators in Rome, had Catiline's conspiracy
+succeeded. And so, too, in acknowledging that Catiline was the outcome
+of the Gracchi, and to some extent the preparation for Cęsar, we must
+again compare him with them, his motives and designs with theirs, before
+we can allow ourselves to sympathize with him, because there was much in
+them worthy of praise and honor.
+
+That the Gracchi were seditious no historian has, I think, denied. They
+were willing to use the usages and laws of the Republic where those
+usages and laws assisted them, but as willing to act illegally when the
+usages and laws ran counter to them. In the reforms or changes which
+they attempted they were undoubtedly rebels; but no reader comes across
+the tale of the death, first of one and then of the other, without a
+regret. It has to be owned that they were murdered in tumults which they
+themselves had occasioned. But they were honest and patriotic. History
+has declared of them that their efforts were made with the real purport
+of relieving their fellow-countrymen from what they believed to be the
+tyranny of oligarchs. The Republic even in their time had become too
+rotten to be saved; but the world has not the less given them the credit
+for a desire to do good; and the names of the two brothers, rebels as
+they were, have come down to us with a sweet savor about them. Cęsar, on
+the other hand, was no doubt of the same political party. He too was
+opposed to the oligarchs, but it never occurred to him that he could
+save the Republic by any struggles after freedom. His mind was not given
+to patriotism of that sort--not to memories, not to associations. Even
+laws were nothing to him but as they might be useful. To his thinking,
+probably even in his early days, the state of Rome required a master.
+Its wealth, its pleasures, its soldiers, its power, were there for any
+one to take who could take them--for any one to hold who could hold
+them. Mr. Beesly, the last defender of Catiline, has stated that very
+little was known in Rome of Cęsar till the time of Catiline's
+conspiracy, and in that I agree with him. He possessed high family rank,
+and had been Quęstor and Ędile; but it was only from this year out that
+his name was much in men's mouths, and that he was learning to look into
+things. It may be that he had previously been in league with
+Catiline--that he was in league with him till the time came for the
+great attempt. The evidence, as far as it goes, seems to show that it
+was so. Rome had been the prey of many conspiracies. The dominion of
+Marius and the dominion of Sulla had been effected by conspiracies. No
+doubt the opinion was strong with many that both Cęsar and Crassus, the
+rich man, were concerned with Catiline. But Cęsar was very far-seeing,
+and, if such connection existed, knew how to withdraw from it when the
+time was not found to be opportune. But from first to last he always was
+opposed to the oligarchy. The various steps from the Gracchi to him were
+as those which had to be made from the Girondists to Napoleon. Catiline,
+no doubt, was one of the steps, as were Danton and Robespierre steps.
+The continuation of steps in each case was at first occasioned by the
+bad government and greed of a few men in power. But as Robespierre was
+vile and low, whereas Vergniaud was honest and Napoleon great, so was it
+with Catiline between the Gracchi and Cęsar. There is, to my thinking,
+no excuse for Catiline in the fact that he was a natural step, not even
+though he were a necessary step, between the Gracchi and Cęsar.
+
+I regard as futile the attempts which are made to rewrite history on the
+base of moral convictions and philosophical conclusion. History very
+often has been, and no doubt often again will be, rewritten, with good
+effect and in the service of truth, on the finding of new facts. Records
+have been brought to light which have hitherto been buried, and
+testimonies are compared with testimonies which have not before been seen
+together. But to imagine that a man may have been good who has lain under
+the ban of all the historians, all the poets, and all the tellers of
+anecdotes, and then to declare such goodness simply in accordance with
+the dictates of a generous heart or a contradictory spirit, is to disturb
+rather than to assist history. Of Catiline we at least know that he
+headed a sedition in Rome in the year of Cicero's Consulship; that he
+left the city suddenly; that he was killed in the neighborhood of Pistoia
+fighting against the Generals of the Republic, and that he left certain
+accomplices in Rome who were put to death by an edict of the Senate. So
+much I think is certain to the most truculent doubter. From his
+contemporaries, Sallust and Cicero, we have a very strongly expressed
+opinion of his character. They have left to us denunciations of the man
+which have made him odious to all after-ages, so that modern poets have
+made him a stock character, and have dramatized him as a fiend. Voltaire
+has described him as calling upon his fellow-conspirators to murder
+Cicero and Cato, and to burn the city. Ben Jonson makes Catiline kill a
+slave and mix his blood, to be drained by his friends. "There cannot be a
+fitter drink to make this sanction in." The friends of Catiline will say
+that this shows no evidence against the man. None, certainly; but it is a
+continued expression of the feeling that has prevailed since Catiline's
+time. In his own age Cicero and Sallust, who were opposed in all their
+political views, combined to speak ill of him. In the next, Virgil makes
+him as suffering his punishment in hell.[179] In the next, Velleius
+Paterculus speaks of him as the conspirator whom Cicero had
+banished.[180] Juvenal makes various allusions to him, but all in the
+same spirit. Juvenal cared nothing for history, but used the names of
+well-known persons as illustrations of the idea which he was
+presenting.[181] Valerius Maximus, who wrote commendable little essays
+about all the virtues and all the vices, which he illustrated with the
+names of all the vicious and all the virtuous people he knew, is very
+severe on Catiline.[182] Florus, who wrote two centuries and a half after
+the conspiracy, gives us of Catiline the same personal story as that told
+both by Sallust and Cicero: "Debauchery, in the first place; and then the
+poverty which that had produced; and then the opportunity of the time,
+because the Roman armies were in distant lands, induced Catiline to
+conspire for the destruction of his country."[183] Mommsen, who was
+certainly biassed by no feeling in favor of Cicero, declares that
+Catiline in particular was "one of the most nefarious men in that
+nefarious age. His villanies belong to the criminal records, not to
+history."[184] All this is no evidence. Cicero and Sallust may possibly
+have combined to lie about Catiline. Other Roman writers may have
+followed them, and modern poets and modern historians may have followed
+the Roman writers. It is possible that the world may have been wrong as
+to a period of Roman history with which it has thought itself to be well
+acquainted; but the world now has nothing to go by but the facts as they
+have come down to it. The writers of the ages since have combined to
+speak of Cicero with respect and admiration. They have combined, also, to
+speak of Catiline with abhorrence. They have agreed, also, to treat those
+other rebels, the Gracchi, after such a fashion that, in spite of their
+sedition, a sweet savor, as I have said, attaches itself to their names.
+For myself, I am contented to take the opinion of the world, and feel
+assured that I shall do no injustice in speaking of Catiline as all who
+have written about him hitherto have spoken of him I cannot consent to
+the building up of a noble patriot out of such materials as we have
+concerning him.[185]
+
+Two strong points have been made for Catiline in Mr. Beesly's defence.
+His ancestors had been Consuls when the forefathers of patricians of a
+later date "were clapping their chapped hands and throwing up their
+sweaty nightcaps." That scorn against the people should be expressed by
+the aristocrat Casca was well supposed by Shakspeare; but how did a
+liberal of the present day bring himself to do honor to his hero by such
+allusions? In truth, however, the glory of ancient blood and the
+disgrace attaching to the signs of labor are ideas seldom relinquished
+even by democratic minds. A Howard is nowhere lovelier than in America,
+or a sweaty nightcap less relished. We are then reminded how Catiline
+died fighting, with the wounds all in front; and are told that the
+"world has generally a generous word for the memory of a brave man dying
+for his cause, be that cause what it will; but for Catiline none!" I
+think there is a mistake in the sentiment expressed here. To die readily
+when death must come is but a little thing, and is done daily by the
+poorest of mankind. The Romans could generally do it, and so can the
+Chinese. A Zulu is quite equal to it, and people lower in civilization
+than Chinese or Zulus. To encounter death, or the danger of death, for
+the sake of duty--when the choice is there; but duty and death are
+preferred to ignominious security, or, better still, to security which
+shall bring with it self-abasement--that is grand. When I hear that a
+man "rushed into the field and, foremost fighting, fell," if there have
+been no adequate occasion, I think him a fool. If it be that he has
+chosen to hurry on the necessary event, as was Catiline's case, I
+recognize him as having been endowed with certain physical attributes
+which are neither glorious nor disgraceful. That Catiline was
+constitutionally a brave man no one has denied. Rush, the murderer, was
+one of the bravest men of whom I remember to have heard. What credit is
+due to Rush is due to Catiline.
+
+What we believe to be the story of Catiline's life is this: In Sulla's
+time he was engaged, as behooved a great nobleman of ancient blood, in
+carrying out the Dictator's proscriptions and in running through
+whatever means he had. There are fearful stories told of him as to
+murdering his own son and other relatives; as to which Mr. Beesly is no
+doubt right in saying that such tales were too lightly told in Rome to
+deserve implicit confidence. To serve a purpose any one would say
+anything of any enemy. Very marvellous qualities are attributed to
+him--as to having been at the same time steeped in luxury and yet able
+and willing to bear all bodily hardships. He probably had been engaged
+in murders--as how should a man not have been so who had served under
+Sulla during the Dictatorship? He had probably allured some young
+aristocrats into debauchery, when all young aristocrats were so allured.
+He had probably undergone some extremity of cold and hunger. In reading
+of these things the reader will know by instinct how much he may
+believe, and how much he should receive as mythic. That he was a fast
+young nobleman, brought up to know no scruples, to disregard blood, and
+to look upon his country as a milch cow from which a young nobleman
+might be fed with never-ending streams of rich cream in the shape of
+money to be borrowed, wealth to be snatched, and, above all, foreigners
+to be plundered, we may take, I think, as proved. In spite of his vices,
+or by aid of them, he rose in the service of his country. That such a
+one should become a Prętor and a Governor was natural. He went to Africa
+with proconsular authority, and of course fleeced the Africans. It was
+as natural as that a flock of sheep should lose their wool at shearing
+time. He came back intent, as was natural also, on being a Consul, and
+of carrying on the game of promotion and of plunder. But there came a
+spoke in his wheel--the not unusual spoke of an accusation from the
+province. While under accusation for provincial robbery he could not
+come forward as a candidate, and thus he was stopped in his career.
+
+It is not possible now to unravel all the personal feuds of the
+time--the ins and outs of family quarrels. Clodius--the Clodius who was
+afterward Cicero's notorious enemy and the victim of Milo's fury--became
+the accuser of Catiline on behalf of the Africans. Though Clodius was
+much the younger, they were men of the same class. It may be possible
+that Clodius was appointed to the work--as it had been intended that
+Cęcilius should be appointed at the prosecution of Verres--in order to
+assure not the conviction but the acquittal of the guilty man. The
+historians and biographers say that Clodius was at last bought by a
+bribe, and that he betrayed the Africans after that fashion. It may be
+that such bribery was arranged from the first. Our interest in that
+trial lies in the fact that Cicero no doubt intended, from political
+motives, to defend Catiline. It has been said that he did do so. As far
+as we know, he abandoned the intention. We have no trace of his speech,
+and no allusion in history to an occurrence which would certainly have
+been mentioned.[186] But there was _no_ reason why he should not have
+done so. He defended Fonteius, and I am quite willing to own that he
+knew Fonteius to have been a robber. When I look at the practice of our
+own times, I find that thieves and rebels are defended by honorable
+advocates, who do not scruple to take their briefs in opposition to
+their own opinions. It suited Cicero to do the same. If I were detected
+in a plot for blowing up a Cabinet Council, I do not doubt but that I
+should get the late attorney-general to defend me.[187]
+
+But Catiline, though he was acquitted, was balked in his candidature for
+the Consulship of the next year, B.C. 65. P. Sulla and Autronius were
+elected--that Sulla to whose subsequent defence I have just referred in
+this note--but were ejected on the score of bribery, and two others,
+Torquatus and Cotta, were elected in their place. In this way three men
+standing on high before their countrymen--one having been debarred from
+standing for the Consulship, and the other two having been robbed of
+their prize even when it was within their grasp--not unnaturally became
+traitors at heart. Almost as naturally they came together and conspired.
+Why should they have been selected as victims, having only done that
+which every aristocrat did as a matter of course in following out his
+recognized profession in living upon the subject nations? Their conduct
+had probably been the same as that of others, or if more glaring, only
+so much so as is always the case with vices as they become more common.
+However, the three men fell, and became the centre of a plot which is
+known as the first Catiline conspiracy.
+
+The reader must bear in mind that I am now telling the story of
+Catiline, and going back to a period of two years before Cicero's
+Consulship, which was B.C. 63. How during that year Cicero successfully
+defended Murena when Cato endeavored to rob him of his coming
+Consulship, has been already told. It may be that Murena's hands were no
+cleaner than those of Sulla and Autronius, and that they lacked only the
+consular authority and forensic eloquence of the advocate who defended
+Murena. At this time, when the two appointed Consuls were rejected,
+Cicero had hardly as yet taken any part in public politics. He had been
+Quęstor, Ędile, and Prętor, filling those administrative offices to the
+best of his ability. He had, he says, hardly heard of the first
+conspiracy.[189] That what he says is true, is, I think, proved by the
+absence of all allusion to it in his early letters, or in the speeches
+or fragments of speeches that are extant. But that there was such a
+conspiracy we cannot doubt, nor that the three men named, Catiline,
+Sulla, and Autronius, were leaders in it. What would interest us, if
+only we could have the truth, is whether Cęsar and Crassus were joined
+in it.
+
+It is necessary again to consider the condition of the Republic. To us a
+conspiracy to subvert the government under which the conspirer lives
+seems either a very terrible remedy for great evils, or an attempt to do
+evil which all good men should oppose. We have the happy conspiracy in
+which Washington became the military leader, and the French Revolution,
+which, bloody as it was, succeeded in rescuing Frenchmen from the
+condition of serfdom. At home we have our own conspiracy against the
+Stuart royalty, which had also noble results. The Gracchi had attempted
+to effect something of the same kind at Rome; but the moral condition of
+the people had become so low that no real love of liberty remained.
+Conspiracy! oh yes. As long as there was anything to get, of course he
+who had not got it would conspire against him who had. There had been
+conspiracies for and against Marius, for and against Cinna, for and
+against Sulla. There was a grasping for plunder, a thirst for power
+which meant luxury, a greed for blood which grew from the hatred which
+such rivalry produced. These were the motive causes for conspiracies;
+not whether Romans should be free but whether a Sulla or a Cotta should
+be allowed to run riot in a province.
+
+Cęsar at this time had not done much in the Roman world except fall
+greatly into debt. Knowing, as we do know now, his immense intellectual
+capacity, we cannot doubt but at the age he had now reached,
+thirty-five, B.C. 65, he had considered deeply his prospects in life.
+There is no reason for supposing that he had conceived the idea of being
+a great soldier. That came to him by pure accident, some years
+afterward. To be Quęstor, Prętor, and Consul, and catch what was going,
+seems to have been the cause to him of having encountered extraordinary
+debt. That he would have been a Verres, or a Fonteius, or a Catiline, we
+certainly are not entitled to think. Over whatever people he might have
+come to reign, and in whatever way he might have procured his kingdom,
+he would have reigned with a far-seeing eye, fixed upon future results.
+At this period he was looking out for a way to advance himself. There
+were three men, all just six years his senior, who had risen or were
+rising into great repute; they were Pompey, Cicero, and Catiline. There
+were two who were noted for having clean hands in the midst of all the
+dirt around; and they were undoubtedly the first Romans of the day.
+Catiline was determined that he too would be among the first Romans of
+the day; but his hands had never been clean. Which was the better way
+for such a one as Cęsar to go?
+
+To have had Pompey under his feet, or Cicero, must have then seemed to
+Cęsar to be impracticable, though the time came when he did, in
+different ways, have his feet on both. With Catiline the chance of
+success might be better. Crassus he had already compassed. Crassus was
+like M. Poirier in the play--a man who, having become rich, then allowed
+himself the luxury of an ambition. If Cęsar joined the plot we can well
+understand that Crassus should have gone with him. We have all but
+sufficient authority for saying that it was so, but authority
+insufficient for declaring it. That Sallust, in his short account of the
+first conspiracy, should not have implicated Cęsar was a matter of
+course,[190] as he wrote altogether in Cęsar's interest. That Cicero
+should not have mentioned it is also quite intelligible. He did not wish
+to pull down upon his ears the whole house of the aristocracy.
+Throughout his career it was his object to maintain the tenor of the law
+with what smallest breach of it might be possible; but he was wise
+enough to know that when the laws were being broken on every side he
+could not catch in his nets all those who broke them. He had to pass
+over much; to make the best of the state of things as he found them. It
+is not to be supposed that a conspirator against the Republic would be
+horrible to him, as would be to us a traitor against the Crown: there
+were too many of them for horror. If Cęsar and Crassus could be got to
+keep themselves quiet, he would be willing enough not to have to add
+them to his list of enemies. Livy is presumed to have told us that this
+conspiracy intended to restore the ejected Consuls, and to kill the
+Consuls who had been established in their place. But the book in which
+this was written is lost, and we have only the Epitome, or heading of
+the book, of which we know that it was not written by Livy.[191]
+Suetonius, who got his story not improbably from Livy, tells us that
+Cęsar was suspected of having joined this conspiracy with Crassus;[192]
+and he goes on to say that Cicero, writing subsequently to one Axius,
+declared that "Cęsar had attempted in his Consulship to accomplish the
+dominion which he had intended to grasp in his Ędileship" the year in
+question. There is, however, no such letter extant. Asconius, who, as I
+have said before, wrote in the time of Tiberius, declares that Cicero in
+his lost oration, "In toga candida," accused Crassus of having been the
+author of the conspiracy. Such is the information we have; and if we
+elect to believe that Cęsar was then joined with Catiline, we must be
+guided by our ideas of probability rather than by evidence.[193] As I
+have said before, conspiracies had been very rife. To Cęsar it was no
+doubt becoming manifest that the Republic, with its oligarchs, must
+fall. Subsequently it did fall, and he was--I will not say the
+conspirator, nor will I judge the question by saying that he was the
+traitor; but the man of power who, having the legions of the Republic in
+his hands, used them against the Republic. I can well understand that he
+should have joined such a conspiracy as this first of Catiline, and then
+have backed out of it when he found he could not trust those who were
+joined with him.
+
+This conspiracy failed. One man omitted to give a signal at one time,
+and another at another. The Senate was to have been slaughtered; the two
+Consuls, Cotta and Torquatus, murdered, and the two ex-Consuls, Sulla
+and Autronius, replaced. Though all the details seem to have been known
+to the Consuls, Catiline was allowed to go free, nor were any steps
+taken for the punishment of the conspirators.
+
+The second conspiracy was attempted in the Consulship of Cicero, B.C.
+63, two years after the first. Catiline had struggled for the
+Consulship, and had failed. Again there would be no province, no
+plunder, no power. This interference, as it must have seemed to him,
+with his peculiar privileges, had all come from Cicero. Cicero was the
+busybody who was attempting to stop the order of things which had, to
+his thinking, been specially ordained by all the gods for the sustenance
+of one so well born, and at the same time so poor, as himself. There was
+a vulgar meddling about it--all coming from the violent virtue of a
+Consul whose father had been a nobody at Arpinum--which was well
+calculated to drive Catiline into madness. So he went to work and got
+together in Rome a body of men as discontented and almost as nobly born
+as himself, and in the country north of Rome an army of rebels, and
+began his operations with very little secrecy. In all the story the most
+remarkable feature is the openness with which many of the details of the
+conspiracy were carried on. The existence of the rebel army was known;
+it was known that Catiline was the leader; the causes of his
+disaffection were known; his comrades in guilt were known When any
+special act was intended, such as might be the murder of the Consul or
+the firing of the city, secret plots were concocted in abundance. But
+the grand fact of a wide-spread conspiracy could go naked in Rome, and
+not even a Cicero dare to meddle with it.
+
+[Sidenote: B.C. 63, ętat. 44.]
+
+As to this second conspiracy, the conspiracy with which Sallust and
+Cicero have made us so well acquainted, there is no sufficient ground
+for asserting that Cęsar was concerned in it.[194] That he was greatly
+concerned in the treatment of the conspirators there is no doubt. He had
+probably learned to appreciate the rage, the madness, the impotence of
+Catiline at their proper worth. He too, I think, must have looked upon
+Cicero as a meddling, over-virtuous busybody; as did even Pompey when he
+returned from the East. What practical use could there be in such a man
+at such a time--in one who really believed in honesty, who thought of
+liberty and the Republic, and imagined that he could set the world right
+by talking? Such must have been the feeling of Cęsar, who had both
+experience and foresight to tell him that Rome wanted and must have a
+master. He probably had patriotism enough to feel that he, if he could
+acquire the mastership, would do something beyond robbery--would not
+satisfy himself with cutting the throats of all his enemies, and feeding
+his supporters with the property of his opponents. But Cicero was
+impracticable--unless, indeed, he could be so flattered as to be made
+useful. It was thus, I think, that Cęsar regarded Cicero, and thus that
+he induced Pompey to regard him. But now, in the year of his Consulship,
+Cicero had really talked himself into power, and for this year his
+virtue must be allowed to have its full way.
+
+He did so much in this year, was so really efficacious in restraining
+for a time the greed and violence of the aristocracy, that it is not
+surprising that he was taught to believe in himself. There were, too,
+enough of others anxious for the Republic to bolster him up in his own
+belief. There was that Cornelius in whose defence Cicero made the two
+great speeches which have been unfortunately lost, and there was Cato,
+and up to this time there was Pompey, as Cicero thought. Cicero, till he
+found himself candidate for the Consulship, had contented himself with
+undertaking separate cases, in which, no doubt, politics were concerned,
+but which were not exclusively political. He had advocated the
+employment of Pompey in the East, and had defended Cornelius. He was
+well acquainted with the history of the Republic; but he had probably
+never asked himself the question whether it was in mortal peril, and if
+so, whether it might possibly be saved. In his Consulship he did do so;
+and, seeing less of the Republic than we can see now, told himself that
+it was possible.
+
+The stories told to us of Catiline's conspiracy by Sallust and by Cicero
+are so little conflicting that we can trust them both. Trusting them
+both, we are justified in believing that we know the truth. We are here
+concerned only with the part which Cicero took. Nothing, I think, which
+Cicero says is contradicted by Sallust, though of much that Cicero
+certainly did Sallust is silent. Sallust damns him, but only by faint
+praise. We may, therefore, take the account of the plot as given by
+Cicero himself as verified: indeed, I am not aware that any of Cicero's
+facts have been questioned.
+
+Sallust declares that Catiline's attempt was popular in Rome
+generally.[195] This, I think, must be taken as showing simply that
+revolution and conspiracy were in themselves popular: that, as a
+condition of things around him such as existed in Rome, a plotter of
+state plots should be able to collect a body of followers, was a thing
+of course; that there were many citizens who would not work, and who
+expected to live in luxury on public or private plunder, is certain.
+When the conspiracy was first announced in the Senate, Catiline had an
+army collected; but we have no proof that the hearts of the inhabitants
+of Rome generally were with the conspirators. On the other hand, we have
+proof, in the unparalleled devotion shown by the citizens to Cicero
+after the conspiracy was quelled, that their hearts were with him. The
+populace, fond of change, liked a disturbance; but there is nothing to
+show that Catiline was ever beloved as had been the Gracchi, and other
+tribunes of the people who came after them.
+
+Catiline, in the autumn of the year B.C. 63, had arranged the outside
+circumstances of his conspiracy, knowing that he would, for the third
+time, be unsuccessful in his canvass for the Consulship. That Cicero
+with other Senators should be murdered seems to have been their first
+object, and that then the Consulship should be seized by force. On the
+21st of October Cicero made his first report to the Senate as to the
+conspiracy, and called upon Catiline for his answer. It was then that
+Catiline made his famous reply: "That the Republic had two bodies, of
+which one was weak and had a bad head"--meaning the aristocracy, with
+Cicero as its chief--"and the other strong, but without any head,"
+meaning the people; "but that as for himself, so well had the people
+deserved of him, that as long as he lived a head should be
+forth-coming."[196] Then, at that sitting, the Senate decreed, in the
+usual formula, "That the Consuls were to take care that the Republic did
+not suffer."[197] On the 22d of October, the new Consuls, Silanus and
+Murena, were elected. On the 23d, Catiline was regularly accused of
+conspiracy by Paulus Lepidus, a young nobleman, in conformity with a law
+which had been enacted fifty-five years earlier, "de vi publica," as to
+violence applied to the State. Two days afterward it was officially
+reported that Manlius--or Mallius, as he seems to have been generally
+called--Catiline's lieutenant, had openly taken up arms in Etruria. The
+27th had been fixed by the conspirators for the murder of Cicero and the
+other Senators. That all this was to be, and was so arranged by
+Catiline, had been declared in the Senate by Cicero himself on that day
+when Catiline told them of the two bodies and the two heads. Cicero,
+with his intelligence, ingenuity, and industry, had learned every
+detail. There was one Curius among the conspirators, a fair specimen of
+the young Roman nobleman of the day, who told it all to his mistress
+Fulvia, and she carried the information to the Consul. It is all
+narrated with fair dramatic accuracy in Ben Jonson's dull play, though
+he has attributed to Cęsar a share in the plot, for doing which he had
+no authority. Cicero, on that sitting in the Senate, had been specially
+anxious to make Catiline understand that he knew privately every
+circumstance of the plot. Throughout the whole conspiracy his object was
+not to take Catiline, but to drive him out of Rome. If the people could
+be stirred up to kill him in their wrath, that might be well; in that
+way there might be an end of all the trouble. But if that did not come
+to pass, then it would be best to make the city unbearable to the
+conspirators. If they could be driven out, they must either take
+themselves to foreign parts and be dispersed, or must else fight and
+assuredly be conquered. Cicero himself was never blood-thirsty, but the
+necessity was strong upon him of ridding the Republic from these
+blood-thirsty men.
+
+The scheme for destroying Cicero and the Senators on the 27th of October
+had proved abortive. On the 6th of the next month a meeting was held in
+the house of one Marcus Porcius Lęca, at which a plot was arranged for
+the killing of Cicero the next day--for the killing of Cicero alone--he
+having been by this time found to be the one great obstacle in their
+path. Two knights were told off for the service, named Vargunteius and
+Cornelius. These, after the Roman fashion, were to make their way early
+on the following morning into the Consul's bedroom for the ostensible
+purpose of paying him their morning compliments, but, when there, they
+were to slay him. All this, however, was told to Cicero, and the two
+knights, when they came, were refused admittance. If Cicero had been a
+man given to fear, as has been said of him, he must have passed a
+wretched life at this period. As far as I can judge of his words and
+doings throughout his life, he was not harassed by constitutional
+timidity. He feared to disgrace his name, to lower his authority, to
+become small in the eyes of men, to make political mistakes, to do that
+which might turn against him. In much of this there was a falling off
+from that dignity which, if we do not often find it in a man, we can all
+of us imagine; but of personal dread as to his own skin, as to his own
+life, there was very little. At this time, when, as he knew well, many
+men with many weapons in their hands, men who were altogether
+unscrupulous, were in search for his blood he never seems to have
+trembled.
+
+But all Rome trembled--even according to Sallust. I have already shown
+how he declares in one part of his narrative that the common people as a
+body were with Catiline, and have attempted to explain what was meant by
+that expression. In another, in an earlier chapter, he says "that the
+State," meaning the city, "was disturbed by all this, and its appearance
+changed.[198] Instead of the joy and ease which had lately prevailed,
+the effect of the long peace, a sudden sadness fell upon every one." I
+quote the passage because that other passage has been taken as proving
+the popularity of Catiline. There can, I think, be no doubt that the
+population of Rome was, as a body, afraid of Catiline. The city was to
+be burnt down, the Consuls and the Senate were to be murdered, debts
+were to be wiped out, slaves were probably to be encouraged against
+their masters. The "permota civitas" and the "cuncta plebes," of which
+Sallust speaks, mean that all the "householders" were disturbed, and
+that all the "roughs" were eager with revolutionary hopes.
+
+On the 8th of November, the day after that on which the Consul was to
+have been murdered in his own house, he called a special meeting of the
+Senate in the temple of Jupiter Stator. The Senate in Cicero's time was
+convened according to expedience, or perhaps as to the dignity of the
+occasion, in various temples. Of these none had a higher reputation than
+that of the special Jupiter who is held to have befriended Romulus in
+his fight with the Sabines. Here was launched that thunderbolt of
+eloquence which all English school-boys have known for its "Quousque
+tandem abutere, Catilina, patientia nostra." Whether it be from the awe
+which has come down to me from my earliest years, mixed perhaps with
+something of dread for the great pedagogue who first made the words to
+sound grandly in my ears, or whether true critical judgment has since
+approved to me the real weight of the words, they certainly do contain
+for my intelligence an expression of almost divine indignation. Then
+there follows a string of questions, which to translate would be vain,
+which to quote, for those who read the language, is surely unnecessary.
+It is said to have been a fault with Cicero that in his speeches he runs
+too much into that vein of wrathful interrogation which undoubtedly
+palls upon us in English oratory when frequent resort is made to it. It
+seems to be too easy, and to contain too little of argument. It was
+this, probably, of which his contemporaries complained when they
+declared him to be florid, redundant, and Asiatic in his style.[199]
+This questioning runs through nearly the whole speech, but the reader
+cannot fail to acknowledge its efficacy in reference to the matter in
+hand. Catiline was sitting there himself in the Senate, and the
+questions were for the most part addressed to him. We can see him now, a
+man of large frame, with bold, glaring eyes, looking in his wrath as
+though he were hardly able to keep his hands from the Consul's throat,
+even there in the Senate. Though he knew that this attack was to be made
+on him, he had stalked into the temple and seated himself in a place of
+honor, among the benches intended for those who had been Consuls. When
+there, no one spoke to him, no one saluted him. The consular Senators
+shrunk away, leaving their places of privilege. Even his
+brother-conspirators, of whom many were present, did not dare to
+recognize him. Lentulus was no doubt there, and Cethegus, and two of the
+Sullan family, and Cassius Longinus, and Autronius, and Lęca, and
+Curius. All of them were or had been conspirators in the same cause.
+Cęsar was there too, and Crassus. A fellow conspirator with Catiline
+would probably be a Senator. Cicero knew them all. We cannot say that in
+this matter Cęsar was guilty, but Cicero, no doubt, felt that Cęsar's
+heart was with Catiline. It was his present task so to thunder with his
+eloquence that he should turn these bitter enemies into seeming
+friends--to drive Catiline from out of the midst of them, so that it
+should seem that he had been expelled by those who were in truth his
+brother-conspirators; and this it was that he did.
+
+He declared the nature of the plot, and boldly said that, such being the
+facts, Catiline deserved death. "If," he says, "I should order you to be
+taken and killed, believe me I should be blamed rather for my delay in
+doing so than for my cruelty." He spoke throughout as though all the
+power were in his own hands, either to strike or to forbear. But it was
+his object to drive him out and not to kill him. "Go," he said; "that
+camp of yours and Mallius, your lieutenant, are too long without you.
+Take your friends with you. Take them all. Cleanse the city of your
+presence. When its walls are between you and me then I shall feel myself
+secure. Among us here you may no longer stir yourself. I will not have
+it--I will not endure it. If I were to suffer you to be killed, your
+followers in the conspiracy would remain here; but if you go out, as I
+desire you, this cesspool of filth will drain itself off from out the
+city. Do you hesitate to do at my command that which you would fain do
+yourself? The Consul requires an enemy to depart from the city. Do you
+ask me whether you are to go into exile? I do not order it; but if you
+ask my counsel, I advise it." Exile was the severest punishment known by
+the Roman law, as applicable to a citizen, and such a punishment it was
+in the power of no Consul or other officer of state to inflict. Though
+he had taken upon himself the duty of protecting the Republic, still he
+could not condemn a citizen. It was to the moral effect of his words
+that he must trust: "Non jubeo, sed si me consulis, suadeo." Catiline
+heard him to the end, and then, muttering a curse, left the Senate, and
+went out of the city. Sallust tells us that he threatened to extinguish,
+in the midst of the general ruin he would create, the flames prepared
+for his own destruction. Sallust, however, was not present on the
+occasion, and the threat probably had been uttered at an earlier period
+of Catiline's career. Cicero tells us expressly, in one of his
+subsequent works, that Catiline was struck dumb.[200]
+
+Of this first Catiline oration Sallust says, that "Marcus Tullius the
+Consul, either fearing the presence of the man, or stirred to anger,
+made a brilliant speech, very useful to the Republic."[201] This, coming
+from an enemy, is stronger testimony to the truth of the story told by
+Cicero, than would have been any vehement praise from the pen of a
+friend.
+
+Catiline met some of his colleagues the same night. They were the very
+men who as Senators had been present at his confusion, and to them he
+declared his purpose of going. There was nothing to be done in the city
+by him. The Consul was not to be reached. Catiline himself was too
+closely watched for personal action. He would join the army at Fęsulę
+and then return and burn the city. His friends, Lentulus, Cethegus, and
+the others, were to remain and be ready for fire and slaughter as soon
+as Catiline with his army should appear before the walls. He went, and
+Cicero had been so far successful.
+
+But these men, Lentulus, Cethegus, and the other Senators, though they
+had not dared to sit near Catiline in the Senate, or to speak a word to
+him, went about their work zealously when evening had come. A report was
+spread among the people that the Consul had taken upon himself to drive
+a citizen into exile. Catiline, the ill-used Catiline--Catiline, the
+friend of the people, had, they said, gone to Marseilles in order that
+he might escape the fury of the tyrant Consul. In this we see the
+jealousy of Romans as to the infliction of any punishment by an
+individual officer on a citizen. It was with a full knowledge of what
+was likely to come that Cicero had ironically declared that he only
+advised the conspirator to go. The feeling was so strong that on the
+next morning he found himself compelled to address the people on the
+subject. Then was uttered the second Catiline oration, which was spoken
+in the open air to the citizens at large. Here too there are words,
+among those with which he began his speech, almost as familiar to us as
+the "Quousque tandem"--"Abiit; excessit; evasit; erupit!" This Catiline,
+says Cicero, this pest of his country, raging in his madness, I have
+turned out of the city. If you like it better, I have expelled him by my
+very words. "He has departed. He has fled. He has gone out from among
+us. He has broken away!" "I have made this conspiracy plain to you all,
+as I said I would, unless indeed there may be some one here who does not
+believe that the friends of Catiline will do the same as Catiline would
+have done. But there is no time now for soft measures. We have to be
+strong-handed. There is one thing I will do for these men. Let them too
+go out, so that Catiline shall not pine for them. I will show them the
+road. He has gone by the Via Aurelia. If they will hurry they may catch
+him before night." He implies by this that the story about Marseilles
+was false. Then he speaks with irony of himself as that violent Consul
+who could drive citizens into exile by the very breath of his mouth.
+"Ego vehemens ille consul qui verbo cives in exsilium ejicio." So he
+goes on, in truth defending himself, but leading them with him to take
+part in the accusation which he intends to bring against the chief
+conspirators who remain in the city. If they too will go, they may go
+unscathed; if they choose to remain, let them look to themselves.
+
+Through it all we can see there is but one thing that he fears--that he
+shall be driven by the exigencies of the occasion to take some steps
+which shall afterward be judged not to have been strictly legal, and
+which shall put him into the power of his enemies when the day of his
+ascendency shall have passed away. It crops out repeatedly in these
+speeches.[202] He seems to be aware that some over-strong measure will
+be forced upon him for which he alone will be held responsible. If he
+can only avoid that, he will fear nothing else; if he cannot avoid it,
+he will encounter even that danger. His foresight was wonderfully
+accurate. The strong hand was used, and the punishment came upon him,
+not from his enemies but from his friends, almost to the bursting of his
+heart.
+
+Though the Senate had decreed that the Consuls were to see that the
+Republic should take no harm, and though it was presumed that
+extraordinary power was thereby conferred, it is evident that no power
+was conferred of inflicting punishment. Antony, as Cicero's colleague,
+was nothing. The authority, the responsibility, the action were, and
+were intended, to remain with Cicero. He could not legally banish any
+one. It was only too evident that there must be much slaughter. There
+was the army of rebels with which it would be necessary to fight. Let
+them go, these rebels within the city, and either join the army and get
+themselves killed, or else disappear, whither they would, among the
+provinces. The object of this second Catiline oration, spoken to the
+people, was to convince the remaining conspirators that they had better
+go, and to teach the citizens generally that in giving such counsel he
+was "banishing" no one. As far as the citizens were concerned he was
+successful; but he did not induce the friends of Catiline to follow
+their chief. This took place on the 9th of November. After the oration
+the Senate met again, and declared Catiline and Mallius to be public
+enemies.
+
+Twenty-four days elapsed before the third speech was spoken--twenty-four
+days during which Rome must have been in a state of very great fever.
+Cicero was actively engaged in unravelling the plots the details of
+which were still being carried on within the city; but nevertheless he
+made that speech for Murena before the judicial bench of which I gave an
+account in the last chapter, and also probably another for Piso, of
+which we have nothing left. We cannot but marvel that he should have
+been able at such a time to devote his mind to such subjects, and
+carefully to study all the details of legal cases. It was only on
+October 21st that Murena had been elected Consul; and yet on the 20th of
+November Cicero defended him with great skill on a charge of bribery.
+There is an ease, a playfulness, a softness, a drollery about this
+speech which appears to be almost incompatible with the stern, absorbing
+realities and great personal dangers in the midst of which he was
+placed; but the agility of his mind was such that there appears to have
+been no difficulty to him in these rapid changes.
+
+On the same day, the 20th of November, when Cicero was defending Murena,
+the plot was being carried on at the house of a certain Roman lady named
+Sempronia. It was she of whom Sallust said that she danced better than
+became an honest woman. If we can believe Sallust, she was steeped in
+luxury and vice. At her house a most vile project was hatched for
+introducing into Rome Rome's bitterest foreign foes. There were in the
+city at this time certain delegates from a people called the Allobroges,
+who inhabited the lower part of Savoy. The Allobroges were of Gaulish
+race. They were warlike, angry, and at the present moment peculiarly
+discontented with Rome. There had been certain injuries, either real or
+presumed, respecting which these delegates had been sent to the city.
+There they had been delayed, and fobbed off with official replies which
+gave no satisfaction, and were supposed to be ready to do any evil
+possible to the Republic. What if they could be got to go back suddenly
+to their homes, and bring a legion of red-haired Gauls to assist the
+conspirators in burning down Rome? A deputation from the delegates came
+to Sempronia's house and there met the conspirators--Lentulus and
+others. They entered freely into the project; but having, as was usual
+with foreign embassies at Rome, a patron or peculiar friend of their own
+among the aristocracy, one Fabius Sanga by name, they thought it well to
+consult him.[203] Sanga, as a matter of course, told everything to our
+astute Consul.
+
+Then the matter was arranged with more than all the craft of a modern
+inspector of police. The Allobroges were instructed to lend themselves
+to the device, stipulating, however, that they should have a written
+signed authority which they could show to their rulers at home. The
+written signed documents were given to them. With certain conspirators
+to help them out of the city they were sent upon their way. At a bridge
+over the Tiber they were stopped by Cicero's emissaries. There was a
+feigned fight, but no blood was shed; and the ambassadors with their
+letters were brought home to the Consul.
+
+We are astonished at the marvellous folly of these conspirators, so that
+we could hardly have believed the story had it not been told alike by
+Cicero and by Sallust, and had not allusion to the details been common
+among later writers.[204] The ambassadors were taken at the Milvian
+bridge early on the morning of the 3d of December, and in the course of
+that day Cicero sent for the leaders of the conspiracy to come to him.
+Lentulus, who was then Prętor, Cethegus, Gabinius, and Statilius all
+obeyed the summons. They did not know what had occurred, and probably
+thought that their best hope of safety lay in compliance. Cęparius was
+also sent for, but he for the moment escaped--in vain; for before two
+days were over he had been taken and put to death with the others.
+Cicero again called the Senate together, and entered the meeting leading
+the guilty Prętor by the hand. Here the offenders were examined and
+practically acknowledged their guilt. The proofs against them were so
+convincing that they could not deny it. There were the signatures of
+some; arms were found hidden in the house of another. The Senate decreed
+that the men should be kept in durance till some decision as to their
+fate should have been pronounced. Each of them was then given in custody
+to some noble Roman of the day. Lentulus the Prętor was confided to the
+keeping of a Censor, Cethegus to Cornificius, Statilius to Cęsar,
+Gabinius to Crassus, and Cęparius, who had not fled very far before he
+was taken, to one Terentius. We can imagine how willingly would Crassus
+and Cęsar have let their men go, had they dared. But Cicero was in the
+ascendant. Cęsar, whom we can imagine to have understood that the hour
+had not yet come for putting an end to the effete Republic, and to have
+perceived also that Catiline was no fit helpmate for him in such a work,
+must bide his time, and for the moment obey. That he was inclined to
+favor the conspirators there is no doubt; but at present he could
+befriend them only in accordance with the law. The Allobroges were
+rewarded. The Prętors in the city who had assisted Cicero were thanked.
+To Cicero himself a supplication was decreed. A supplication was, in its
+origin, a thanksgiving to the gods on account of a victory, but had come
+to be an honor shown to the General who had gained the victory. In this
+case it was simply a means of adding glory to Cicero, and was peculiar,
+as hitherto the reward had only been conferred for military
+service.[205] Remembering that, we can understand what at the time must
+have been the feeling in Rome as to the benefits conferred by the
+activity and patriotism of the Consul.
+
+On the evening of the same day, the 3d of December, Cicero again
+addressed the people, explaining to them what he had done, and what he
+had before explained in the Senate. This was the third Catiline speech,
+and for rapid narrative is perhaps surpassed by nothing that he ever
+spoke. He explains again the motives by which he had been actuated; and
+in doing so extols the courage, the sagacity, the activity of Catiline,
+while he ridicules the folly and the fury of the others.[206] Had
+Catiline remained, he says, we should have been forced to fight with him
+here in the city; but with Lentulus the sleepy, and Cassius the fat, and
+Cethegus the mad, it has been comparatively easy to deal. It was on this
+account that he had got rid of him, knowing that their presence would do
+no harm. Then he reminds the people of all that the gods have done for
+them, and addresses them in language which makes one feel that they did
+believe in their gods. It is one instance, one out of many which history
+and experience afford us, in which an honest and a good man has
+endeavored to use for salutary purposes a faith in which he has not
+himself participated. Does the bishop of to-day, when he calls upon his
+clergy to pray for fine weather, believe that the Almighty will change
+the ordained seasons, and cause his causes to be inoperative because
+farmers are anxious for their hay or for their wheat? But he feels that
+when men are in trouble it is well that they should hold communion with
+the powers of heaven. So much also Cicero believed, and therefore spoke
+as he did on this occasion. As to his own religious views, I shall say
+something in a future chapter.
+
+Then in a passage most beautiful for its language, though it is hardly
+in accordance with our idea of the manner in which a man should speak of
+himself, he explains his own ambition: "For all which, my
+fellow-countrymen, I ask for no other recompense, no ornament or honor,
+no monument but that this day may live in your memories. It is within
+your breasts that I would garner and keep fresh my triumph, my glory,
+the trophies of my exploits. No silent, voiceless statue, nothing which
+can be bestowed upon the worthless, can give me delight. Only by your
+remembrance can my fortunes be nurtured--by your good words, by the
+records which you shall cause to be written, can they be strengthened
+and perpetuated. I do think that this day, the memory of which, I trust,
+may be eternal, will be famous in history because the city has been
+preserved, and because my Consulship has been glorious."[207] He ends
+the paragraph by an allusion to Pompey, admitting Pompey to a
+brotherhood of patriotism and praise. We shall see how Pompey repaid
+him.
+
+How many things must have been astir in his mind when he spoke those
+words of Pompey! In the next sentence he tells the people of his own
+danger. He has taken care of their safety; it is for them to take care
+of his.[208] But they, these Quirites, these Roman citizens, these
+masters of the world, by whom everything was supposed to be governed,
+could take care of no one; certainly not of themselves, as certainly not
+of another. They could only vote, now this way and now that, as somebody
+might tell them, or more probably as somebody might pay them. Pompey was
+coming home, and would soon be the favorite. Cicero must have felt that
+he had deserved much of Pompey, but was by no means sure that the debt
+of gratitude would be paid.
+
+Now we come to the fourth or last Catiline oration, which was made to
+the Senate, convened on the 5th of December with the purpose of deciding
+the fate of the leading conspirators who were held in custody. We learn
+to what purport were three of the speeches made during this
+debate--those of Cęsar and of Cato and of Cicero. The first two are
+given to us by Sallust, but we can hardly think that we have the exact
+words. The Cęsarean spirit which induced Sallust to ignore altogether
+the words of Cicero would have induced him to give his own
+representation of the other two, even though we were to suppose that he
+had been able to have them taken down by short-hand writers--Cicero's
+words, we have no doubt, with such polishing as may have been added to
+the short-hand writers' notes by Tiro, his slave and secretary. The
+three are compatible each with the other, and we are entitled to believe
+that we know the line of argument used by the three orators.
+
+Silanus, one of the Consuls elect, began the debate by counselling
+death. We may take it for granted that he had been persuaded by Cicero
+to make this proposition. During the discussion he trembled at the
+consequences, and declared himself for an adjournment of their decision
+till they should have dealt with Catiline. Murena, the other Consul
+elect, and Catulus, the Prince of the Senate,[209] spoke for death.
+Tiberius Nero, grandfather of Tiberius the Emperor, made that
+proposition for adjournment to which Silanus gave way. Then--or I should
+rather say in the course of the debate, for we do not know who else may
+have spoken--Cęsar got up and made his proposition. His purpose was to
+save the victims, but he knew well that, with such a spirit abroad as
+that existing in the Senate and the city, he could only do so not by
+absolving but by condemning. Wicked as these men might be, abominably
+wicked it was, he said, for the Senate to think of their own dignity
+rather than of the enormity of the crime. As they could not, he
+suggested, invent any new punishment adequate to so abominable a crime,
+it would be better that they should leave the conspirators to be dealt
+with by the ordinary laws. It was thus that, cunningly, he threw out the
+idea that as Senators they had no power of death. He did not dare to
+tell them directly that any danger would menace them, but he exposed the
+danger skilfully before their eyes. "Their crimes," he says again,
+"deserve worse than any torture you can inflict. But men generally
+recollect what comes last. When the punishment is severe, men will
+remember the severity rather than the crime." He argues all this
+extremely well. The speech is one of great ingenuity, whether the words
+be the words of Sallust or of Cęsar. We may doubt, indeed, whether the
+general assertion he made as to death had much weight with the Senators
+when he told them that death to the wicked was a relief, whereas life
+was a lasting punishment; but when he went on to remind them of the Lex
+Porcia, by which the power of punishing a Roman citizen, even under the
+laws, was limited to banishment, unless by a plebiscite of the people
+generally ordering death, then he was efficacious. He ended by proposing
+that the goods of the conspirators should be sold, and that the men
+should be condemned to imprisonment for life, each in some separate
+town. This would, I believe, have been quite as illegal as the
+death-sentence, but it would not have been irrevocable. The Senate, or
+the people, in the next year could have restored to the men their
+liberty, and compensated them for their property. Cicero was determined
+that the men should die. They had not obeyed him by leaving the city,
+and he was convinced that while they lived the conspiracy would live
+also. He fully understood the danger, and resolved to meet it. He
+replied to Cęsar, and with infinite skill refrained from the expression
+of any strong opinion, while he led his hearers to the conviction that
+death was necessary. For himself he had been told of his danger; "but if
+a man be brave in his duty death cannot be disgraceful to him; to one
+who had reached the honors of the Consulship it could not be premature;
+to no wise man could it be a misery." Though his brother, though his
+wife, though his little boy, and his daughter just married were warning
+him of his peril, not by all that would he be influenced. "Do you," he
+says, "Conscript Fathers, look to the safety of the Republic. These are
+not the Gracchi, nor Saturninus, who are brought to you for
+judgment--men who broke the laws, indeed, and therefore suffered death,
+but who still were not unpatriotic. These men had sworn to burn the
+city, to slay the Senate, to force Catiline upon you as a ruler. The
+proofs of this are in your own hands. It was for me, as your Consul, to
+bring the facts before you. Now it is for you, at once, before night, to
+decide what shall be done. The conspirators are very many; it is not
+only with these few that you are dealing. On whatever you decide, decide
+quickly. Cęsar tells you of the Sempronian law[210]--the law, namely,
+forbidding the death of a Roman citizen--but can he be regarded as a
+citizen who has been found in arms against the city?" Then there is a
+fling at Cęsar's assumed clemency, showing us that Cęsar had already
+endeavored to make capital out of that virtue which he displayed
+afterward so signally at Alesia and Uxellodunum. Then again he speaks of
+himself in words so grand that it is impossible but to sympathize with
+him: "Let Scipio's name be glorious--he by whose wisdom and valor
+Hannibal was forced out of Italy. Let Africanus be praised loudly, who
+destroyed Carthage and Numantia, the two cities which were most hostile
+to Rome. Let Paulus be regarded as great--he whose triumph that great
+King Perses adorned. Let Marius be held in undying honor, who twice
+saved Italy from foreign yoke. Let Pompey be praised above all, whose
+noble deeds are as wide as the sun's course. Perhaps among them there
+may be a spot, too, for me; unless, indeed, to win provinces to which we
+may take ourselves in exile is more than to guard that city to which the
+conquerors of provinces may return in safety." The last words of the
+orator also are fine: "Therefore, Conscript Fathers, decide wisely and
+without fear. Your own safety, and that of your wives and children, that
+of your hearths and altars, the temples of your gods, the homes
+contained in your city, your liberty, the welfare of Italy and of the
+whole Republic are at stake. It is for you to decide. In me you have a
+Consul who will obey your decrees, and will see that they be made to
+prevail while the breath of life remains to him." Cato then spoke
+advocating death, and the Senate decreed that the men should die. Cicero
+himself led Lentulus down to the vaulted prison below, in which
+executioners were ready for the work, and the other four men were made
+to follow. A few minutes afterward, in the gleaming of the evening, when
+Cicero was being led home by the applauding multitude, he was asked
+after the fate of the conspirators. He answered them but by one word
+"Vixerunt"--there is said to have been a superstition with the Romans as
+to all mention of death--"They have lived their lives."
+
+As to what was being done outside Rome with the army of conspirators in
+Etruria, it is not necessary for the biographer of Cicero to say much.
+Catiline fought, and died fighting. The conspiracy was then over. On the
+31st of December Cicero retired from his office, and Catiline fell at
+the battle of Pistoia on the 5th of January following, B.C. 62.
+
+A Roman historian writing in the reign of Tiberius has thought it worth
+his while to remind us that a great glory was added to Cicero's consular
+year by the birth of Augustus--him who afterward became Augustus
+Cęsar.[211] Had a Roman been living now, he might be excused for saying
+that it was an honor to Augustus to have been born in the year of
+Cicero's Consulship.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X.
+
+_CICERO AFTER HIS CONSULSHIP._
+
+
+The idea that the great Consul had done illegally in putting citizens to
+death was not allowed to lie dormant even for a day. It must be
+remembered that a decree of the Senate had no power as a law. The laws
+could be altered, or even a new law made, only by the people. Such was
+the constitution of the Republic. Further on, when Cicero will appeal
+as, in fact, on trial for the offence so alleged to have been committed,
+I shall have to discuss the matter; but the point was raised against
+him, even in the moment of his triumph, as he was leaving the
+Consulship. The reiteration of his self-praise had created for him many
+enemies. It had turned friends against him, and had driven men even of
+his own party to ask themselves whether all this virtue was to be
+endured. When a man assumes to be more just than his neighbors there
+will be many ways found of throwing in a shell against him. It was
+customary for a Consul when he vacated his office to make some
+valedictory speech. Cicero was probably expected to take full advantage
+of the opportunity. From other words which have come from him, on other
+occasions but on the same subject, it would not be difficult to compose
+such a speech as he might have spoken. But there were those who were
+already sick of hearing him say that Rome had been saved by his
+intelligence and courage. We can imagine what Cęsar might have said
+among his friends of the expediency of putting down this self-laudatory
+Consul. As it was, Metellus Nepos, one of the Tribunes, forbade the
+retiring officer to do more than take the oath usual on leaving office,
+because he had illegally inflicted death upon Roman citizens. Metellus,
+as Tribune, had the power of stopping any official proceeding. We hear
+from Cicero himself that he was quite equal to the occasion. He swore,
+on the spur of the moment, a solemn oath, not in accordance with the
+form common to Consuls on leaving office, but to the effect that during
+his Consulship Rome had been saved by his work alone.[212] We have the
+story only as it is told by Cicero himself, who avers that the people
+accepted the oath as sworn with exceeding praise.[213] That it was so we
+may, I think, take as true. There can be no doubt as to Cicero's
+popularity at this moment, and hardly a doubt also as to the fact that
+Metellus was acting in agreement with Cęsar, and also in accord with the
+understood feelings of Pompey, who was absent with his army in the East.
+This Tribune had been till lately an officer under Pompey, and went into
+office together with Cęsar, who in that year became Prętor. This,
+probably, was the beginning of the party which two years afterward
+formed the first Triumvirate, B.C. 60. It was certainly now, in the year
+succeeding the Consulship of Cicero, that Cęsar, as Prętor, began his
+great career.
+
+[Sidenote: B.C. 62, ętat. 45.]
+
+It becomes manifest to us, as we read the history of the time, that the
+Dictator of the future was gradually entertaining the idea that the old
+forms of the Republic were rotten, and that any man who intended to
+exercise power in Rome or within the Roman Empire must obtain it and
+keep it by illegal means. He had probably adhered to Catiline's first
+conspiracy, but only with such moderate adhesion as enabled him to
+withdraw when he found that his companions were not fit for the work. It
+is manifest that he sympathized with the later conspiracy, though it may
+be doubted whether he himself had ever been a party to it. When the
+conspiracy had been crushed by Cicero, he had given his full assent to
+the crushing of it. We have seen how loudly he condemned the wickedness
+of the conspirators in his endeavor to save their lives. But, through it
+all, there was a well-grounded conviction in his mind that Cicero, with
+all his virtues, was not practical. Not that Cicero was to him the same
+as Cato, who with his Stoic grandiloquence must, to his thinking, have
+been altogether useless. Cicero, though too virtuous for supreme rule,
+too virtuous to seize power and hold it, too virtuous to despise as
+effete the institutions of the Republic, was still a man so gifted, and
+capable in so many things, as to be very great as an assistant, if he
+would only condescend to assist. It is in this light that Cęsar seems to
+have regarded Cicero as time went on; admiring him, liking him, willing
+to act with him if it might be possible, but not the less determined to
+put down all the attempts at patriotic republican virtue in which the
+orator delighted to indulge. Mr. Forsyth expresses an opinion that
+Cęsar, till he crossed the Rubicon after his ten years' fighting in
+Gaul, had entertained no settled plan of overthrowing the Constitution.
+Probably not; nor even then. It may be doubted whether Cęsar ever spoke
+to himself of overthrowing the Constitution. He came gradually to see
+that power and wealth were to be obtained by violent action, and only by
+violent action. He had before him the examples of Marius and Sulla, both
+of whom had enjoyed power and had died in their beds. There was the
+example, also, of others who, walking unwarily in those perilous times,
+had been banished as was Verres, or killed as was Catiline. We can
+easily understand that he, with his great genius, should have
+acknowledged the need both of courage and caution. Both were exercised
+when he consented to be absent from Rome, and almost from Italy, during
+the ten years of the Gallic wars. But this, I think, is certain, that
+from the time in which his name appears prominent--from the period,
+namely, of the Catiline conspiracy--he had determined not to overthrow
+the Constitution, but so to carry himself, amid the great affairs of the
+day, as not to be overthrown himself.
+
+Of what nature was the intercourse between him and Pompey when Pompey
+was still absent in the East we do not know; but we can hardly doubt
+that some understanding had begun to exist. Of this Cicero was probably
+aware. Pompey was the man whom Cicero chose to regard as his
+party-leader, not having himself been inured to the actual politics of
+Rome early enough in life to put himself forward as the leader of his
+party. It had been necessary for him, as a "novus homo," to come forward
+and work as an advocate, and then as an administrative officer of the
+State, before he took up with politics. That this was so I have shown by
+quoting the opening words of his speech Pro Lege Manilia. Proud as he
+was of the doings of his Consulship, he was still too new to his work to
+think that thus he could claim to stand first. Nor did his ambition lead
+him in that direction. He desired personal praise rather than personal
+power. When in the last Catiline oration to the people he speaks of the
+great men of the Republic--of the two Scipios, and of Paulus Ęmilius and
+of Marius--he adds the name of Pompey to these names; or gives, rather,
+to Pompey greater glory than to any of them; "Anteponatur omnibus
+Pompeius." This was but a few days before Metellus as Tribune had
+stopped him in his speech--at the instigation, probably, of Cęsar, and
+in furtherance of Pompey's views. Pompey and Cęsar could agree, at any
+rate, in this--that they did not want such a one as Cicero to interfere
+with them.
+
+All of which Cicero himself perceived. The specially rich province of
+Macedonia, which would have been his had he chosen to take it on
+quitting the Consulship, he made over to Antony--no doubt as a bribe, as
+with us one statesman may resign a special office to another to keep
+that other from kicking over the traces. Then Gaul became his province,
+as allotted--Cisalpine Gaul, as northern Italy was then called; a
+province less rich in plunder and pay than Macedonia. But Cicero wanted
+no province, and had contrived that this should be confided to Metellus
+Celer, the brother of Nepos, who, having been Prętor when he himself was
+Consul, was entitled to a government. This too was a political bribe. If
+courtesy to Cęsar, if provinces given up here and there to Antonys and
+Metelluses, if flattery lavished on Pompey could avail anything, he
+could not afford to dispense with such aids. It all availed nothing.
+From this time forward, for the twenty years which were to run before
+his death, his life was one always of trouble and doubt, often of
+despair, and on many occasions of actual misery. The source of this was
+that Pompey whom, with divine attributes, he had extolled above all
+other Romans.
+
+The first extant letter written by Cicero after his Consulship was
+addressed to Pompey.[214] Pompey was still in the East, but had
+completed his campaigns against Mithridates successfully. Cicero begins
+by congratulating him, as though to do so were the purpose of his
+letter. Then he tells the victorious General that there were some in
+Rome not so well pleased as he was at these victories. It is supposed
+that he alluded here to Cęsar; but, if so, he probably misunderstood the
+alliance which was already being formed between Cęsar and Pompey. After
+that comes the real object of the epistle. He had received letters from
+Pompey congratulating him in very cold language as to the glories of his
+Consulship. He had expected much more than that from the friend for whom
+he had done so much. Still, he thanks his friend, explaining that the
+satisfaction really necessary to him was the feeling that he had behaved
+well to his friend. If his friend were less friendly to him in return,
+then would the balance of friendship be on his side. If Pompey were not
+bound to him, Cicero, by personal gratitude, still would he be bound by
+necessary co-operation in the service of the Republic. But, lest Pompey
+should misunderstand him, he declares that he had expected warmer
+language in reference to his Consulship, which he believes to have been
+withheld by Pompey lest offence should be given to some third person. By
+this he means Cęsar, and those who were now joining themselves to Cęsar.
+Then he goes on to warn him as to the future: "Nevertheless, when you
+return, you will find that my actions have been of such a nature that,
+even though you may loom larger than Scipio, I shall be found worthy to
+be accepted as your Lęlius."[215]
+
+Infinite care had been given to the writing of this letter, and sharp
+had been the heart-burnings which dictated it. It was only by asserting
+that he, on his own part, was satisfied with his own fidelity as a
+friend, that Cicero could express his dissatisfaction at Pompey's
+coldness. It was only by continuing to lavish upon Pompey such flattery
+as was contained in the reference to Scipio, in which a touch of subtle
+irony is mixed with the flattery, that he could explain the nature of
+the praise which had, he thought, been due to himself. There is
+something that would have been abject in the nature of these
+expressions, had it not been Roman in the excess of the adulation. But
+there is courage in the letter, too, when he tells his correspondent
+what he believes to have been the cause of the coldness of which he
+complains: "Quod verere ne cujus animum offenderes"--"Because you fear
+lest you should give offence to some one." But let me tell you, he goes
+on to say, that my Consulship has been of such a nature that you,
+Scipio, as you are, must admit me as your friend.
+
+In these words we find a key to the whole of Cicero's connection with
+the man whom he recognizes as his political leader. He was always
+dissatisfied with Pompey; always accusing Pompey in his heart of
+ingratitude and insincerity; frequently speaking to Atticus with bitter
+truth of the man's selfishness and incapacity, even of his cruelty and
+want of patriotism; nicknaming him because of his absurdities; declaring
+of him that he was minded to be a second Sulla; but still clinging to
+him as the political friend and leader whom he was bound to follow. In
+their earlier years, when he could have known personally but little of
+Pompey, because Pompey was generally absent from Rome, he had taken it
+into his head to love the man. He had been called "Magnus;" he had been
+made Consul long before the proper time; he had been successful on
+behalf of the Republic, and so far patriotic. He had hitherto adhered to
+the fame of the Republic. At any rate, Cicero had accepted him, and
+could never afterward bring himself to be disloyal to the leader with
+whom he had professed to act. But the feeling evinced in this letter was
+carried on to the end. He had been, he was, he would be, true to his
+political connection with Pompey; but of Pompey's personal character to
+himself he had nothing but complaints to make.
+
+[Sidenote: B.C. 62, ętat. 45.]
+
+We have two other letters written by Cicero in this year, the first of
+which is in answer to one from Metellus Celer to him, also extant.
+Metellus wrote to complain of the ill-treatment which he thought he had
+received from Cicero in the Senate, and from the Senate generally.
+Cicero writes back at much greater length to defend himself, and to
+prove that he had behaved as a most obliging friend to his
+correspondent, though he had received a gross affront from his
+correspondent's brother Nepos. Nepos had prevented him in that matter of
+the speech. It is hardly necessary to go into the question of this
+quarrel, except in so far as it may show how the feeling which led to
+Cicero's exile was growing up among many of the aristocracy in Rome.
+There was a counterplot going on at the moment--a plot on the behalf of
+the aristocracy for bringing back Pompey to Rome, not only with glory
+but with power, probably originating in a feeling that Pompey would be a
+more congenial master than Cicero. It was suggested that as Pompey had
+been found good in all State emergencies--for putting down the pirates,
+for instance, and for conquering Mithridates--he would be the man to
+contend in arms with Catiline. Catiline was killed before the matter
+could be brought to an issue, but still the conspiracy went on, based on
+the jealousy which was felt in regard to Cicero. This man, who had
+declared so often that he had served his country, and who really had
+crushed the Catilinarians by his industry and readiness, might, after
+all, be coming forward as another Sulla, and looking to make himself
+master by dint of his virtues and his eloquence. The hopelessness of the
+condition of the Republic may be recognized in the increasing
+conspiracies which were hatched on every side. Metellus Nepos was sent
+home from Asia in aid of the conspiracy, and got himself made Tribune,
+and stopped Cicero's speech. In conjunction with Cęsar, who was Prętor,
+he proposed his new law for the calling of Pompey to their aid. Then
+there was a fracas between him and Cęsar on the one side and Cato on the
+other, in which Cato at last was so far victorious that both Cęsar and
+Metellus were stopped in the performance of their official duties. Cęsar
+was soon reinstated, but Metellus Nepos returned to Pompey in the East,
+and nothing came of the conspiracy. It is only noticed here as evidence
+of the feeling which existed as to Cicero in Rome, and as explaining the
+irritation on both sides indicated in the correspondence between Cicero
+and Metellus Celer, the brother of Nepos,[216] whom Cicero had procured
+the government of Gaul.
+
+The third letter from Cicero in this year was to Sextius, who was then
+acting as Quęstor--or Proquęstor, as Cicero calls him--with Antony as
+Proconsul in Macedonia. It is specially interesting as telling us that
+the writer had just completed the purchase of a house in Rome from
+Crassus for a sum amounting to about £30,000 of our money. There was
+probably no private mansion in Rome of greater pretension. It had been
+owned by Livius Drusus, the Tribune--a man of colossal fortune, as we
+are told by Mommsen--who was murdered at the door of it thirty years
+before. It afterward passed into the hands of Crassus the rich, and now
+became the property of Cicero. We shall hear how it was destroyed during
+his exile, and how fraudulently made over to the gods, and then how
+restored to Cicero, and how rebuilt at the public expense. The history
+of the house has been so well written that we know even the names of
+Cicero's two successors in it, Censorinus and Statilius.[217]
+
+It is interesting to know the sort of house which Cicero felt to be
+suitable to his circumstances, for by that we may guess what his
+circumstances were. In making this purchase he is supposed to have
+abandoned the family house in which his father had lived next door to
+the new mansion, and to have given it up to his brother. Hence we may
+argue that he had conceived himself to have risen in worldly
+circumstances. Nevertheless, we are informed by himself in this letter
+to Sextius that he had to borrow money for the occasion--so much so
+that, being a man now indebted, he might be supposed to be ripe for any
+conspiracy. Hence has come to us a story through Aulus Gellius, the
+compiler of anecdotes, to the effect that Cicero was fain to borrow this
+money from a client whose cause he undertook in requital for the favor
+so conferred. Aulus Gellius collected his stories two centuries
+afterward for the amusement of his children, and has never been regarded
+as an authority in matters for which confirmation has been wanting.
+There is no allusion to such borrowing from a client made by any
+contemporary. In this letter to Sextius, in which he speaks jokingly of
+his indebtedness, he declares that he has been able to borrow any amount
+he wanted at six per cent--twelve being the ordinary rate--and gives as
+a reason for this the position which he has achieved by his services to
+the State. Very much has been said of the story, as though the purchaser
+of the house had done something of which he ought to have been ashamed,
+but this seems to have sprung entirely from the idea that a man who, in
+the midst of such wealth as prevailed at Rome, had practised so widely
+and so successfully the invaluable profession of an advocate, must
+surely have taken money for his services. He himself has asserted that
+he took none, and all the evidence that we have goes to show that he
+spoke the truth. Had he taken money, even as a loan, we should have
+heard of it from nearer witnesses than Aulus Gellius, if, as Aulus
+Gellius tells us, it had become known at the time. But because he tells
+his friend that he has borrowed money for the purpose, he is supposed to
+have borrowed it in a disgraceful manner! It will be found that all the
+stones most injurious to Cicero's reputation have been produced in the
+same manner. His own words have been misinterpreted--either the purport
+of them, if spoken in earnest, or their bearing, if spoken in joke--and
+then accusations have been founded on them.[218]
+
+Another charge of dishonest practice was about this time made against
+Cicero without a grain of evidence, though indeed the accusations so
+made, and insisted upon, apparently from a feeling that Cicero cannot
+surely have been altogether clean when all others were so dirty, are too
+numerous to receive from each reader's judgment that indignant denial to
+which each is entitled. The biographer cannot but fear that when so much
+mud has been thrown some will stick, and therefore almost hesitates to
+tell of the mud, believing that no stain of this kind has been in truth
+deserved.
+
+It seems that Antony, Cicero's colleague in the Consulship, who became
+Proconsul in Macedonia, had undertaken to pay some money to Cicero. Why
+the money was to be paid we do not know, but there are allusions in
+Cicero's letters to Atticus to one Teucris (a Trojan woman), and it
+seems that Antony was designated by the nickname. Teucris is very slow
+at paying his money, and Cicero is in want of it. But perhaps it will be
+as well not to push the matter. He, Antony, is to be tried for
+provincial peculation, and Cicero declares that the case is so bad that
+he cannot defend his late colleague. Hence have arisen two different
+suspicions: one that Antony had agreed to make over to Cicero a share of
+the Macedonian plunder in requital of Cicero's courtesy in giving up the
+province which had been allotted to himself; the second, that Antony was
+to pay Cicero for defending him. As to the former, Cicero himself
+alludes to such a report as being common in Macedonia, and as having
+been used by Antony himself as an excuse for increased rapine. But this
+has been felt to be incredible, and has been allowed to fall to the
+ground because of the second accusation. But in support of that there is
+no word of evidence,[219] whereas the tenor of the story as told by
+Cicero himself is against it. Is it likely, would it be possible, that
+Cicero should have begun his letter to Atticus by complaining that he
+could not get from Antony money wanted for a peculiar purpose--it was
+wanted for his new house--and have gone on in the same letter to say
+that this might be as well, after all, as he did not intend to perform
+the service for which the money was to be paid? The reader will remember
+that the accusation is based solely on Cicero's own statement that
+Antony was negligent in paying to him money that had been promised. In
+all these accusations the evidence against Cicero, such as it is, is
+brought exclusively from Cicero's own words. Cicero did afterward defend
+this Antony, as we learn from his speech Pro Domo Suā; but his change of
+purpose in that respect has nothing to do with the argument.
+
+[Sidenote: B.C. 62, ętat. 45.]
+
+We have two speeches extant made this year: one on behalf of P. Sulla,
+nephew to the Dictator; the other for Archias the Greek scholar and
+poet, who had been Cicero's tutor and now claimed to be a citizen of
+Rome. I have already given an extract from this letter, as showing the
+charm of words with which Cicero could recommend the pursuit of
+literature to his hearers. The whole oration is a beautiful morsel of
+Latinity, in which, however, strength of argument is lacking. Cicero
+declares of Archias that he was so eminent in literature that, if not a
+Roman citizen, he ought to be made one. The result is not known, but the
+literary world believes that the citizenship was accorded to him.[220]
+
+The speech on behalf of Sulla was more important, but still not of much
+importance. This Sulla, as may be remembered, had been chosen as Consul
+with Autronius, two years before the Consulship of Cicero, and he had
+then after his election been deposed for bribery, as had also Autronius.
+L. Aurelius Cotta and L. Manlius Torquatus had been elected in their
+places. It has also been already explained that the two rejected Consuls
+had on this account joined Catiline in his first conspiracy. There can
+be no doubt that whether as Consuls or as rejected Consuls, and on that
+account conspirators, their purpose was to use their position as
+aristocrats for robbing the State. They were of the number of those to
+whom no other purpose was any longer possible. Then there came
+Catiline's second conspiracy--the conspiracy which Cicero had
+crushed--and there naturally rose the question whether from time to time
+this or the other noble Roman should not be accused of having joined it.
+Many noble Romans had no doubt joined besides those who had fallen
+fighting, or who had been executed in the dungeons. Accusations became
+very rife. One Vettius accused Cęsar, the Prętor; but Cęsar, with that
+potentiality which was peculiar to him, caused Vettius to be put into
+prison instead of going to prison himself. Many were convicted and
+banished; among them Porcius Lęca, Vargunteius, Servius Sulla, the
+brother of him of whom we are now speaking, and Autronius his colleague.
+In the trial of these men Cicero took no part. He was specially invited
+by Autronius, who was an old school-fellow, to defend him, but he
+refused; indeed, he gave evidence against Autronius at the trial. But
+this Publius Sulla he did defend, and defended successfully. He was
+joined in the case with Hortensius, and declared that as to the matter
+of the former conspiracy he left all that to his learned friend, who was
+concerned with political matters of that date.[221] He, Cicero, had
+known nothing about them. The part of the oration which most interests
+us is that in which he defends himself from the accusations somewhat
+unwisely made against himself personally by young Torquatus, the son of
+him who had been raised to the Consulship in the place of P. Sulla.
+Torquatus had called him a foreigner because he was a "novus homo," and
+had come from the municipality of Arpinum, and had taunted him with
+being a king, because he had usurped authority over life and death in
+regard to Lentulus and the other conspirators. He answers this very
+finely, and does so without an ill-natured word to young Torquatus,
+whom, from respect to his father, he desires to spare. "Do not," he
+says, "in future call me a foreigner, lest you be answered with
+severity, nor a king, lest you be laughed at--unless, indeed, you think
+it king-like so to live as to be a slave not only to no man but to no
+evil passion; unless you think it be king-like to despise all lusts, to
+thirst for neither gold nor silver nor goods, to express yourself freely
+in the Senate, to think more of services due to the people than of
+favors won from them, to yield to none, and to stand firm against many.
+If this be king-like, then I confess that I am a king." Sulla was
+acquitted, but the impartial reader will not the less feel sure that he
+had been part and parcel with Catiline in the conspiracy. It is trusted
+that the impartial reader will also remember how many honest, loyal
+gentlemen have in our own days undertaken the causes of those whom they
+have known to be rebels, and have saved those rebels by their ingenuity
+and eloquence.
+
+At the end of this year, B.C. 62, there occurred a fracas in Rome which
+was of itself but of little consequence to Rome, and would have been of
+none to Cicero but that circumstances grew out of it which created for
+him the bitterest enemy he had yet encountered, and led to his sorest
+trouble. This was the affair of Clodius and of the mysteries of the Bona
+Dea, and I should be disposed to say that it was the greatest misfortune
+of his life, were it not that the wretched results which sprung from it
+would have been made to spring from some other source had that source
+not sufficed. I shall have to tell how it came to pass that Cicero was
+sent into exile by means of the misconduct of Clodius; but I shall have
+to show also that the misconduct of Clodius was but the tool which was
+used by those who were desirous of ridding themselves of the presence of
+Cicero.
+
+This Clodius, a young man of noble family and of debauched manners, as
+was usual with young men of noble families, dressed himself up as a
+woman, and made his way in among the ladies as they were performing
+certain religious rites in honor of the Bona Dea, or Goddess Cybele, a
+matron goddess so chaste in her manners that no male was admitted into
+her presence. It was specially understood that nothing appertaining to a
+man was to be seen on the occasion, not even the portrait of one; and it
+may possibly have been the case that Clodius effected his entrance among
+the worshipping matrons on this occasion simply because his doing so was
+an outrage, and therefore exciting. Another reason was alleged. The
+rites in question were annually held, now in the house of this matron
+and then of that, and during the occasion the very master of the house
+was excluded from his own premises. They were now being performed under
+the auspices of Pompeia, the wife of Julius Cęsar, the daughter of one
+Quintus Pompeius, and it was alleged that Clodius came among the women
+worshippers for the sake of carrying on an intrigue with Cęsar's wife.
+This was highly improbable, as Mr. Forsyth has pointed out to us, and
+the idea was possibly used simply as an excuse to Cęsar for divorcing a
+wife of whom he was weary. At any rate, when the scandal got abroad, he
+did divorce Pompeia, alleging that it did not suit Cęsar to have his
+wife suspected.
+
+[Sidenote: B.C. 61, ętat. 46.]
+
+The story became known through the city, and early in January Cicero
+wrote to Atticus, telling him the facts: "You have probably heard that
+Publius Clodius, the son of Appius, has been taken dressed in a woman's
+clothes in the house of Caius Cęsar, where sacrifice was being made for
+the people, and that he escaped by the aid of a female slave. You will
+be sorry to hear that it has given rise to a great scandal."[222] A few
+days afterward Cicero speaks of it again to Atticus at greater length,
+and we learn that the matter had been taken up by the magistrates with
+the view of punishing Clodius. Cicero writes without any strong feeling
+of his own, explaining to his friend that he had been at first a very
+Lycurgus in the affair, but that he is now tamed down.[223] Then there
+is a third letter in which Cicero is indignant because certain men of
+whom he disapproves, the Consul Piso among the number[224] are anxious
+to save this wicked young nobleman from the punishment due to him;
+whereas others of whom he approves Cato among the number, are desirous
+of seeing justice done. But it was no affair special to Cicero. Shortly
+afterward he writes again to Atticus as to the result of the trial--for
+a trial did take place--and explains to his friend how justice had
+failed. Atticus had asked him how it had come to pass that he, Cicero,
+had not exerted himself as he usually did.[225] This letter, though
+there is matter enough in it of a serious kind, yet jests with the
+Clodian affair so continually as to make us feel that he attributed no
+importance to it as regarded himself. He had exerted himself till
+Hortensius made a mistake as to the selection of the judges. After that
+he had himself given evidence. An attempt was made to prove an alibi,
+but Cicero came forward to swear that he had seen Clodius on the very
+day in question. There had, too, been an exchange of repartee in the
+Senate between himself and Clodius after the acquittal, of which he
+gives the details to his correspondent with considerable
+self-satisfaction. The passage does not enhance our idea of the dignity
+of the Senate, or of the power of Roman raillery. It was known that
+Clodius had been saved by the wholesale bribery of a large number of the
+judges. There had been twenty-five for condemning against thirty-one for
+acquittal.[226] Cicero in the Catiline affair had used a phrase with
+frequency by which he boasted that he had "found out" this and "found
+out" that--"comperisse omnia." Clodius, in the discussion before the
+trial, throws this in his teeth: "Comperisse omnia criminabatur." This
+gave rise to ill-feeling, and hurt Cicero much worse than the dishonor
+done to the Bona Dea. As for that, we may say that he and the Senate and
+the judges cared personally very little, although there was no doubt a
+feeling that it was wise to awe men's minds by the preservation of
+religious respect. Cicero had cared but little about the trial; but as
+he had been able to give evidence he had appeared as a witness, and
+enmity sprung from the words which were spoken both on one side and on
+the other. Clodius was acquitted, which concerns us not at all, and
+concerns Rome very little; but things had so come to pass at the trial
+that Cicero had been very bitter, and that Clodius had become his enemy.
+When a man was wanted, three years afterward, to take the lead in
+persecuting Cicero, Clodius was ready for the occasion.
+
+While the expediency of putting Clodius on his trial was being
+discussed, Pompey had returned from the East, and taken up his residence
+outside the city, because he was awaiting his triumph. The General, to
+whom it was given to march through the city with triumphal glory, was
+bound to make his first entrance after his victories with all his
+triumphal appendages, as though he was at that moment returning from the
+war with all his warlike spoils around him. The usage had obtained the
+strength of law, but the General was not on that account debarred from
+city employment during the interval. The city must be taken out to him
+instead of his coming into the city. Pompey was so great on his return
+from his Mithridatic victories that the Senate went out to sit with him
+in the suburbs, as he could not sit with it within the walls. We find
+him taking part in these Clodian discussions. Cicero at once writes of
+him to Athens with evident dissatisfaction. When questioned about
+Clodius, Pompey had answered with the grand air of aristocrat. Crassus
+on this occasion, between whom and Cicero there was never much
+friendship, took occasion to belaud the late great Consul on account of
+his Catiline successes. Pompey, we are told, did not bear this
+well.[227] Crassus had probably intended to produce some such effect.
+Then Cicero had spoken in answer to the remarks of Crassus, very glibly,
+no doubt, and had done his best to "show off" before Pompey, his new
+listener.[228] More than six years had passed since Pompey could have
+heard him, and then Cicero's voice had not become potential in the
+Senate. Cicero had praised Pompey with all the eloquence in his power.
+"Anteponatur omnibus Pompeius," he had said, in the last Catiline
+oration to the Senate; and Pompey, though he had not heard the words
+spoken, knew very well what had been said. Such oratory was never lost
+upon those whom it most concerned the orator to make acquainted with it.
+But in return for all this praise, for that Manilian oration which had
+helped to send him to the East, for continual loyalty, Pompey had
+replied to Cicero with coldness. He would now let Pompey know what was
+his standing in Rome. "If ever," he says to Atticus, "I was strong with
+my grand rhythm, with my quick rhetorical passages, with enthusiasm, and
+with logic, I was so now. Oh, the noise that I made on the occasion! You
+know what my voice can do. I need say no more about it, as surely you
+must have heard me away there in Epirus." The reader, I trust, will have
+already a sufficiently vivid idea of Cicero's character to understand
+the mingling of triumph and badinage, with a spark of disappointment,
+which is here expressed. "This Pompey, though I have so true to him, has
+not thought much of me--of me, the great Consul who saved Rome! He has
+now heard what even Crassus has been forced to say about me. He shall
+hear me too, me myself, and perhaps he will then know better." It was
+thus that Cicero's mind was at work while he was turning his loud
+periods. Pompey was sitting next to him listening, by no means admiring
+his admirer as that admirer expected to be admired. Cicero had probably
+said to himself that they two together, Pompey and Cicero, might suffice
+to preserve the Republic. Pompey, not thinking much of the Republic, was
+probably telling himself that he wanted no brother near the throne. When
+of two men the first thinks himself equal to the second, the second will
+generally feel himself to be superior to the first. Pompey would have
+liked Cicero better if his periods had not been so round nor his voice
+so powerful. Not that Pompey was distinctly desirous of any throne. His
+position at the moment was peculiar. He had brought back his victorious
+army from the East to Brundisium, and had then disbanded his legions. I
+will quote here the opening words from one of Mommsen's chapters:[229]
+"When Pompeius, after having transacted the affairs committed to his
+charge, again turned his eyes toward home, he found, for the second
+time, the diadem at his feet." He says farther on, explaining why Pompey
+did not lift the diadem: "The very peculiar temperament of Pompeius
+naturally turned once more the scale. He was one of those men who are
+capable, it may be, of a crime, but not of insubordination." And again:
+"While in the capital all was preparation for receiving the new monarch,
+news came that Pompeius, when barely landed at Brundisium, had broken up
+his legions, and with a small escort had entered his journey to the
+capital. If it is a piece of good-fortune to gain a crown without
+trouble, fortune never did more for mortal than it did for Pompeius; but
+on those who lack courage the gods lavish every favor and every gift in
+vain." I must say here that, while I acknowledge the German historian's
+research and knowledge without any reserve, I cannot accept his
+deductions as to character. I do not believe that Pompey found any
+diadem at his feet, or thought of any diadem, nor, according to my
+reading of Roman history, had Marius or had Sulla; nor did Cęsar. The
+first who thought of that perpetual rule--a rule to be perpetuated
+during the ruler's life, and to be handed down to his successors--was
+Augustus. Marius, violent, self-seeking, and uncontrollable, had tumbled
+into supreme power; and, had he not died, would have held it as long as
+he could, because it pleased his ambition for the moment. Sulla, with a
+purpose, had seized it, yet seems never to have got beyond the old Roman
+idea of a temporary Dictatorship. The old Roman horror of a king was
+present to these Romans, even after they had become kings. Pompey, no
+doubt, liked to be first, and when he came back from the East thought
+that by his deeds he was first, easily first. Whether Consul year after
+year, as Marius had been, or Dictator, as Sulla had been, or Imperator,
+with a running command over all the Romans, it was his idea still to
+adhere to the forms of the Republic. Mommsen, foreseeing--if an
+historian can be said to foresee the future from his standing-point in
+the past--that a master was to come for the Roman Empire, and giving all
+his sympathies to the Cęsarean idea, despises Pompey because Pompey
+would not pick up the diadem. No such idea ever entered Pompey's head.
+After a while he "Sullaturized"--was desirous of copying Sulla--to use
+an excellent word which Cicero coined. When he was successfully opposed
+by those whom he had thought inferior to himself, when he found that
+Cęsar had got the better of him, and that a stronger body of Romans went
+with Cęsar than with him, then proscriptions, murder, confiscations, and
+the seizing of dictatorial power presented themselves to his angry mind,
+but of permanent despotic power there was, I think, no thought, nor, as
+far as I can read the records, had such an idea been fixed in Cęsar's
+bosom. To carry on the old trade of Prętor, Consul, Proconsul, and
+Imperator, so as to get what he could of power and wealth and dignity in
+the scramble, was, I think, Cęsar's purpose. The rest grew upon him. As
+Shakspeare, sitting down to write a play that might serve his theatre,
+composed some Lear or Tempest--that has lived and will live forever,
+because of the genius which was unknown to himself--so did Cęsar, by his
+genius, find his way to a power which he had not premeditated. A much
+longer time is necessary for eradicating an idea from men's minds than a
+fact from their practice. This should be proved to us by our own loyalty
+to the word "monarch," when nothing can be farther removed from a
+monarchy than our own commonwealth. From those first breaches in
+republican practice which the historian Florus dates back to the siege
+of Numantia,[230] B.C. 133, down far into the reign of Augustus, it took
+a century and a quarter to make the people understand that there was no
+longer a republican form of government, and to produce a leader who
+could himself see that there was room for a despot.
+
+Pompey had his triumph; but the same aristocratic airs which had annoyed
+Cicero had offended others. He was shorn of his honors. Only two days
+were allowed for his processions. He was irritated, jealous, and no
+doubt desirous of making his power felt; but he thought of no diadem.
+Cęsar saw it all; and he thought of that conspiracy which we have since
+called the First Triumvirate.
+
+[Sidenote: B.C. 62, 61, ętat. 45, 46.]
+
+The two years to which this chapter has been given were uneventful in
+Cicero's life, and produced but little of that stock of literature by
+which he has been made one of mankind's prime favorites. Two discourses
+were written and published, and probably spoken, which are now
+lost--that, namely, to the people against Metellus, in which, no doubt,
+he put forth all that he had intended to say when Metellus stopped him
+from speaking at the expiration of his Consulship; the second, against
+Clodius and Curio, in the Senate, in reference to the discreditable
+Clodian affair. The fragments which we have of this contain those
+asperities which he retailed afterward in his letter to Atticus, and are
+not either instructive or amusing. But we learn from these fragments
+that Clodius was already preparing that scheme for entering the
+Tribunate by an illegal repudiation of his own family rank, which he
+afterward carried out, to the great detriment of Cicero's happiness. Of
+the speeches extant on behalf of Archias and P. Sulla I have spoken
+already. We know of no others made during this period. We have one
+letter besides this to Atticus, addressed to Antony, his former
+colleague, which, like many of his letters, was written solely for the
+sake of popularity.
+
+During these years he lived no doubt splendidly as one of the great men
+of the greatest city in the world. He had his magnificent new mansion in
+Rome, and his various villas, which were already becoming noted for
+their elegance and charms of upholstery and scenic beauty. Not only had
+he climbed to the top of official life himself, but had succeeded in
+taking his brother Quintus up with him. In the second of the two years,
+B.C. 61, Quintus had been sent out as Governor or Proprętor to Asia,
+having then nothing higher to reach than the Consulship, which, however,
+he never attained. This step in the life of Quintus has become famous by
+a letter which the elder brother wrote to him in the second year of his
+office, to which reference will be made in the next chapter.
+
+So far all things seemed to have gone well with Cicero. He was high in
+esteem and authority, powerful, rich, and with many people popular. But
+the student of his life now begins to see that troubles are enveloping
+him. He had risen too high not to encounter envy, and had been too loud
+in his own praise not to make those who envied him very bitter in their
+malice.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI.
+
+_THE TRIUMVIRATE._
+
+
+[Sidenote: B.C. 60, ętat. 47.]
+
+I know of no great fact in history so impalpable, so shadowy, so unreal,
+as the First Triumvirate. Every school-boy, almost every school-girl,
+knows that there was a First Triumvirate, and that it was a political
+combination made by three great Romans of the day, Julius Cęsar, Pompey
+the Great, and Crassus the Rich, for managing Rome among them. Beyond
+this they know little, because there is little to know. That it was a
+conspiracy against the ordained government of the day, as much so as
+that of Catiline, or Guy Faux, or Napoleon III., they do not know
+generally, because Cęsar, who, though the youngest of the three, was the
+mainspring of it, rose by means of it to such a galaxy of glory that all
+the steps by which he rose to it have been supposed to be magnificent
+and heroic. But of the method in which this Triumvirate was constructed,
+who has an idea? How was it first suggested, where, and by whom? What
+was it that the conspirators combined to do? There was no purpose of
+wholesale murder like that of Catiline for destroying the Senate, and of
+Guy Faux for blowing up the House of Lords. There was no plot arranged
+for silencing a body of legislators like that of Napoleon. In these
+scrambles that are going on every year for place and power, for
+provinces and plunder, let us help each other. If we can manage to stick
+fast by each other, we can get all the power and nearly all the plunder.
+That, said with a wink by one of the Triumvirate--Cęsar, let us say--and
+assented to with a nod by Pompey and Crassus, was sufficient for the
+construction of such a conspiracy as that which I presume to have been
+hatched when the First Triumvirate was formed.[231] Mommsen, who never
+speaks of a Triumvirate under that name, except in his index,[232] where
+he has permitted the word to appear for the guidance of persons less
+well instructed than himself, connects the transaction which we call the
+First Triumvirate with a former coalition, which he describes as having
+been made in (B.C. 71) the year before the Consulship of Pompey and
+Crassus. With that we need not concern ourselves as we are dealing with
+the life of Cicero rather than with Roman history, except to say that
+Cęsar, who was the motive power of the second coalition, could have had
+no personal hand in that of 71. Though he had spent his early years in
+"harassing the aristocracy," as Dean Merivale tells us, he had not been
+of sufficient standing in men's minds to be put on a par with Pompey and
+Crassus. When this First Triumvirate was formed, as the modern world
+generally calls it, or the second coalition between the democracy and
+the great military leaders, as Mommsen with greater, but not with
+perfect, accuracy describes it, Cęsar no doubt had at his fingers' ends
+the history of past years. "The idea naturally occurred," says Mommsen,
+"whether * * * an alliance firmly based on mutual advantage might not be
+established between the democrats, with their ally, Crassus, on the one
+side, and Pompeius and the great capitalists on the other. For Pompeius
+such a coalition was certainly a political suicide."[233] The democracy
+here means Cęsar. Cęsar during his whole life had been learning that no
+good could come to any one from an effete Senate, or from republican
+forms which had lost all their salt. Democracy was in vogue with him;
+not, as I think, from any philanthropic desire for equality; not from
+any far-seeing view of fraternal citizenship under one great paternal
+lord--the study of politics had never then reached to that height--but
+because it was necessary that some one, or perhaps some two or three,
+should prevail in the coming struggle, and because he felt himself to be
+more worthy than others. He had no conscience in the matter. Money was
+to him nothing. Another man's money was the same as his own--or better,
+if he could get hold of it. That doctrine taught by Cicero that men are
+"ad justitiam natos" must have been to him simply absurd. Blood was to
+him nothing. A friend was better than a foe, and a live man than a dead.
+Blood-thirstiness was a passion unknown to him; but that tenderness
+which with us creates a horror of blood was equally unknown. Pleasure
+was sweet to him; but he was man enough to feel that a life of pleasure
+was contemptible. To pillage a city, to pilfer his all from a rich man,
+to debauch a friend's wife, to give over a multitude of women and
+children to slaughter, was as easy to him as to forgive an enemy. But
+nothing rankled with him, and he could forgive an enemy. Of courage he
+had that better sort which can appreciate and calculate danger, and then
+act as though there were none. Nothing was wrong to him but what was
+injudicious. He could flatter, cajole, lie, deceive, and rob; nay, would
+think it folly not to do so if to do so were expedient.[234] In this
+coalition he appears as supporting and supported by the people.
+Therefore Mommsen speaks of him as "the democrat." Crassus is called the
+ally of the democrats. It will be enough for us here to know that
+Crassus had achieved his position in the Senate by his enormous wealth,
+and that it was because of his wealth, which was essential to Cęsar,
+that he was admitted into the league. By means of his wealth he had
+risen to power and had conquered and killed Spartacus, of the honor and
+glory of which Pompey robbed him. Then he had been made Consul. When
+Cęsar had gone as Proprętor to Spain, Crassus had found the money. Now
+Cęsar had come back, and was hand and glove with Crassus. When the
+division of the spoil came, some years afterward--the spoil won by the
+Triumvirate--when Cęsar had half perfected his grand achievements in
+Gaul, and Crassus had as yet been only a second time Consul, he got
+himself to be sent into Syria, that by conquering the Parthians he might
+make himself equal to Cęsar. We know how he and his son perished there,
+each of them probably avoiding the last extremity of misery to a
+Roman--that of falling into the hands of a barbarian enemy--by
+destroying himself. Than the life of Crassus nothing could be more
+contemptible; than the death nothing more pitiable. "For Pompeius," says
+Mommsen, "such a coalition was certainly a political suicide." As events
+turned out it became so, because Cęsar was the stronger man of the two;
+but it is intelligible that at that time Pompey should have felt that he
+could not lord it over the Senate, as he wished to do, without aid from
+the democratic party. He had no well-defined views, but he wished to be
+the first man in Rome. He regarded himself as still greatly superior to
+Cęsar, who as yet had been no more than Prętor, and at this time was
+being balked of his triumph because he could not at one and the same
+moment be in the city, as candidate for the Consulship, and out of the
+city waiting for his triumph. Pompey had triumphed three times, had been
+Consul at an unnaturally early age with abnormal honors, had been
+victorious east and west, and was called "Magnus." He did not as yet
+fear to be overshadowed by Cęsar.[235] Cicero was his bugbear.
+
+Mommsen I believe to be right in eschewing the word "Triumvirate." I
+know no mention of it by any Roman writer as applied to this conspiracy,
+though Tacitus, Suetonius, and Florus call by that name the later
+coalition of Octavius, Antony, and Lepidus. The Langhornes, in
+translating Plutarch's life of Crassus, speak of the Triumvirate; but
+Plutarch himself says that Cęsar combined "an impregnable stronghold" by
+joining the three men.[236] Paterculus and Suetonius[237] explain very
+clearly the nature of the compact, but do not use the term. There was
+nothing in the conspiracy entitling it to any official appellation,
+though, as there were three leading conspirators, that which has been
+used has been so far appropriate.
+
+[Sidenote: B.C. 60, ętat. 47.]
+
+Cicero was the bugbear to them all. That he might have been one of them,
+if ready to share the plunder and the power, no reader of the history of
+the time can doubt. Had he so chosen he might again have been a "real
+power in the State;" but to become so in the way proposed to him it was
+necessary that he should join others in a conspiracy against the
+Republic.
+
+I do not wish it to be supposed that Cicero received the overtures made
+to him with horror. Conspiracies were too common for horror; and these
+conspirators were all our Cicero's friends in one sense, though in
+another they might be his opponents. We may imagine that at first
+Crassus had nothing to do with the matter, and that Pompey would fain
+have stood aloof in his jealousy. But Cęsar knew that it was well to
+have Cicero, if Cicero was to be had. It was not only his eloquence
+which was marvellously powerful, or his energy which had been shown to
+be indomitable: there was his character, surpassed by that of no Roman
+living; if only, in giving them the use of his character, he could be
+got to disregard the honor and the justice and the patriotism on which
+his character had been founded. How valuable may character be made, if
+it can be employed under such conditions! To be believed because of your
+truth, and yet to lie; to be trusted for your honesty, and yet to cheat;
+to have credit for patriotism, and yet to sell your country! The
+temptations to do this are rarely put before a man plainly, in all their
+naked ugliness. They certainly were not so presented to Cicero by Cęsar
+and his associates. The bait was held out to him, as it is daily to
+others, in a form not repellent, with words fitted to deceive and
+powerful almost to persuade. Give us the advantage of your character,
+and then by your means we shall be able to save our country. Though our
+line of action may not be strictly constitutional, if you will look into
+it you will see that it is expedient. What other course is there? How
+else shall any wreck of the Republic be preserved? Would you be another
+Cato, useless and impractical? Join us, and save Rome to some purpose.
+We can understand that in such way was the lure held out to Cicero, as
+it has been to many a politician since. But when the politician takes
+the office offered to him--and the pay, though it be but that of a Lord
+of the Treasury--he must vote with his party.
+
+That Cicero doubted much whether he would or would not at this time
+throw in his lot with Cęsar and Pompey is certain. To be of real
+use--not to be impractical, as was Cato--to save his country and rise
+honestly in power and glory--not to be too straitlaced, not
+over-scrupulous--giving and taking a little, so that he might work to
+good purpose with others in harness--that was his idea of duty as a
+Roman. To serve in accord with Pompey was the first dream of his
+political life, and now Pompey was in accord with Cęsar. It was natural
+that he should doubt--natural that he should express his doubts. Who
+should receive them but Atticus, that "alter ego?" Cicero doubted
+whether he should cling to Pompey--as he did in every phase of his
+political life, till Pompey had perished at the mouth of the Nile. But
+at last he saw his way clear to honesty, as I think he always did. He
+tells his friend that Cęsar had sent his confidential messenger, Balbus,
+to sound him. The present question is whether he shall resist a certain
+agrarian law of which he does not approve, but which is supported by
+both Pompey and Cęsar, or retire from the contest and enjoy himself at
+his country villas, or boldly stay at Rome and oppose the law. Cęsar
+assures him that if he will come over to them, Cęsar will be always true
+to him and Pompey, and will do his best to bring Crassus into the same
+frame of mind. Then he reckons up all the good things which would accrue
+to him: "Closest friendship with Pompey--with Cęsar also, should he wish
+it; the making up of all quarrels with his enemies; popularity with the
+people; ease for his old age, which was coming on him. But that
+conclusion moves me to which I came in my third book."[238] Then he
+repeats the lines given in the note below, which he had written,
+probably this very year, in a poem composed in honor of his own
+Consulship. The lines are not in themselves grand, but the spirit of
+them is magnificent: "Stick to the good cause which in your early youth
+you chose for yourself, and be true to the party you have made your
+own." "Should I doubt when the muse herself has so written," he says,
+alluding to the name of Calliope, given to this third book of his. Then
+he adds a line of Homer, very excellent for the occasion:[239] "No
+augury for the future can be better for you than that which bids you
+serve your country." "But," he says, "we will talk of all that when you
+come to me for the holidays. Your bath shall be ready for you: your
+sister and mother shall be of the party." And so the doubts are settled.
+
+Now came on the question of the Tribuneship of Clodius, in reference to
+which I will quote a passage out of Middleton, because the phrase which
+he uses exactly explains the purposes of Cęsar and Pompey.
+
+[Sidenote: B.C. 60, ętat. 47.]
+
+"Clodius, who had been contriving all this while how to revenge himself
+on Cicero, began now to give an opening to the scheme which he had
+formed for that purpose. His project was to get himself chosen Tribune,
+and in that office to drive him out of the city, by the publication of a
+law which, by some stratagem or other, he hoped to obtrude on the
+people. But as all Patricians were incapable of the Tribunate, by its
+original institution so his first step was to make himself a Plebeian by
+the pretence of an adoption into a Plebeian house, which could not yet
+be done without the suffrage of the people. This case was wholly new,
+and contrary to all the forms--wanting every condition, and serving none
+of the ends which were required in regular adoptions--so that, on the
+first proposal, it seemed too extravagant to be treated seriously, and
+would soon have been hissed off with scorn, had it not been concerted
+and privately supported by persons of much more weight than Clodius.
+Cęsar was at the bottom of it, and Pompey secretly favored it--not that
+they intended to ruin Cicero, but to keep him only under the lash--and
+if they could not draw him into their measures, to make him at least sit
+quiet, and let Clodius loose upon him."[240]
+
+This, no doubt, was the intention of the political leaders in Rome at
+this conjunction of affairs. It had been found impossible to draw Cicero
+gently into the net, so that he should become one of them. If he would
+live quietly at his Antian or Tusculan villa, amid his books and
+writings, he should be treated with all respect; he should be borne
+with, even though he talked so much of his own Consulate. But if he
+would interfere with the politics of the day, and would not come into
+the net, then he must be dealt with. Cęsar seems to have respected
+Cicero always, and even to have liked him; but he was not minded to put
+up with a "friend" in Rome who from day to day abused all his projects.
+In defending Antony, the Macedonian Proconsul who was condemned, Cicero
+made some unpleasant remarks on the then condition of things. Cęsar, we
+are told, when he heard of this, on the very spur of the moment, caused
+Clodius to be accepted as a Plebeian.
+
+In all this we are reminded of the absolute truth of Mommsen's verdict
+on Rome, which I have already quoted more than once: "On the Roman
+oligarchy of this period no judgment can be passed, save one of
+inexorable and remorseless condemnation." How had it come to pass that
+Cęsar had the power of suddenly causing an edict to become law, whether
+for good or for evil? Cicero's description of what took place is as
+follows:[241] "About the sixth hour of the day, when I was defending my
+colleague Antony in court, I took occasion to complain of certain things
+which were being done in the Republic, and which I thought to be
+injurious to my poor client. Some dishonest persons carried my words to
+men in power"--meaning Cęsar and Pompey--"not, indeed, my own words, but
+words very different from mine. At the ninth hour on that very same day,
+you, Clodius, were accepted as a Plebeian." Cęsar, having been given to
+understand that Cicero had been making himself disagreeable, was
+determined not to put up with it. Suetonius tells the same story with
+admirable simplicity. Of Suetonius it must be said that, if he had no
+sympathy for a patriot such as Cicero, neither had he any desire to
+represent in rosy colors the despotism of a Cęsar. He tells his stories
+simply as he has heard them. "Cicero," says Suetonius,[242] "having at
+some trial complained of the state of the times, Cęsar, on the very same
+day, at the ninth hour, passed Clodius over from the Patrician to the
+Plebeian rank, in accordance with his own desire." How did it come to
+pass that Cęsar, who, though Consul at the time, had no recognized power
+of that nature, was efficacious for any such work as this? Because the
+Republic had come to the condition which the German historian has
+described. The conspiracy between Cęsar and his subordinates had not
+been made for nothing.
+
+The reader will require to know why Clodius should have desired
+degradation, and how it came to pass that this degradation should have
+been fatal to Cicero. The story has been partly told in the passage from
+Middleton. A Patrician, in accordance with the constitution, could not
+be a Tribune of the people. From the commencement of the Tribunate, that
+office had been reserved for the Plebeians. But a Tribune had a power of
+introducing laws which exceeded that of any Senator or any other
+official. "They had acquired the right," we are told in Smith's
+Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities, "of proposing to the comitia
+tributa, or to the Senate, measures on nearly all the important affairs
+of the State;" and as matters stood at this time, no one Tribune could
+"veto" or put an arbitrary stop to a proposition from another. When such
+proposition was made, it was simply for the people to decide by their
+votes whether it should or should not be law. The present object was to
+have a proposition made and carried suddenly, in reference to Cicero,
+which should have, at any rate, the effect of stopping his mouth. This
+could be best done by a Tribune of the people. No other adequate Tribune
+could be found--no Plebeian so incensed against Cicero as to be willing
+to do this, possessing at the same time power enough to be elected.
+Therefore it was that Clodius was so anxious to be degraded.
+
+No Patrician could become a Tribune of the people; but a Patrician might
+be adopted by a Plebeian, and the adopted child would take the rank of
+his father--would, in fact, for all legal purposes, be the same as a
+son. For doing this in any case a law had to be passed--or, in other
+words, the assent of the people must be obtained and registered. But
+many conditions were necessary. The father intending to adopt must have
+no living son of his own, and must be past the time of life at which he
+might naturally hope to have one; and the adopted son must be of a
+fitting age to personate a son--at any rate, must be younger than the
+father; nothing must be done injurious to either family; there must be
+no trick in it, no looking after other result than that plainly
+intended. All these conditions were broken. The pretended father,
+Fonteius, had a family of his own, and was younger than Clodius. The
+great Claudian family was desecrated, and there was no one so ignorant
+as not to know that the purpose intended was that of entering the
+Tribunate by a fraud. It was required by the general law that the Sacred
+College should report as to the proper observances of the prescribed
+regulations, but no priest was ever consulted. Yet Clodius was adopted,
+made a Plebeian, and in the course of the year elected as Tribune.
+
+In reading all this, the reader is mainly struck by the wonderful
+admixture of lawlessness and law-abiding steadfastness. If Cęsar, who
+was already becoming a tyrant in his Consulship, chose to make use of
+this means of silencing Cicero, why not force Clodius into the Tribunate
+without so false and degrading a ceremony? But if, as was no doubt the
+case, he was not yet strong enough to ignore the old popular feelings on
+the subject, how was it that he was able to laugh in his sleeve at the
+laws, and to come forth at a moment's notice and cause the people to
+vote, legally or illegally, just as he pleased? It requires no conjurer
+to tell us the reason. The outside hulls and husks remain when the rich
+fruit has gone. It was in seeing this, and yet not quite believing that
+it must be so, that the agony of Cicero's life consisted. There could
+have been no hope for freedom, no hope for the Republic, when Rome had
+been governed as it was during the Consulship of Cęsar; but Cicero could
+still hope, though faintly, and still buoy himself up with remembrances
+of his own year of office.
+
+In carrying on the story of the newly-adopted child to his election as
+Tribune, I have gone beyond the time of my narration, so that the reader
+may understand the cause and nature and effect of the anger which
+Clodius entertained for Cicero. This originated in the bitter words
+spoken as to the profanation of the Bona Dea, and led to the means for
+achieving Cicero's exile and other untoward passages of his life. In the
+year 60 B.C., when Metellus Celer and Afranius were Consuls, Clodius was
+tried for insulting the Bona Dea, and the since so-called Triumvirate
+was instituted. It has already been shown that Cicero, not without many
+doubts, rejected the first offers which were made to him to join the
+forces that were so united. He seems to have passed the greater portion
+of this year in Rome. One letter only was written from the country, to
+Atticus, from his Tusculan villa, and that is of no special moment. He
+spent his time in the city, still engaged in the politics of the day; as
+to which, though he dreaded the coming together of Cęsar and Pompey and
+Crassus--those "graves principum amicitias" which were to become so
+detrimental to all who were concerned in them--he foresaw as yet but
+little of the evil which was to fall upon his own head. He was by no
+means idle as to literature, though we have but little of what he wrote,
+and do not regret what we have lost. He composed a memoir of his
+Consulate in Greek, which he sent to Atticus with an allusion to his own
+use of the foreign language intended to show that he is quite at ease in
+that matter. Atticus had sent him a memoir, also written in Greek, on
+the same subject, and the two packets had crossed each other on the
+road. He candidly tells Atticus that his attempt seems to be "horridula
+atque incompta," rough and unpolished; whereas Posidonius, the great
+Greek critic of Rhodes who had been invited by him, Cicero, to read the
+memoir, and then himself to treat the same subject, had replied that he
+was altogether debarred from such an attempt by the excellence of his
+correspondent's performance.[244] He also wrote three books of a poem on
+his Consulate, and sent them to Atticus; of which we have a fragment of
+seventy-five lines quoted by himself,[243] and four or five other lines
+including that unfortunate verse handed down by Quintilian, "O
+fortunatum natam me consule Romam"--unless, indeed, it be spurious, as
+is suggested by that excellent critic and whole-hearted friend of the
+orator's, M. Guéroult. Previous to these he had produced in hexameters,
+also, a translation of the Prognostics of Aratus. This is the second
+part of a poem on the heavenly bodies, the first part, the Phęnomena,
+having been turned into Latin verse by him when he was eighteen. Of the
+Prognostics we have only a few lines preserved by Priscian, and a
+passage repeated by the author, also in his De Divinatione. I think that
+Cicero was capable of producing a poem quite worthy of preservation; but
+in the work of this year the subjects chosen were not alluring.
+
+[Sidenote: B.C. 60, ętat. 47.]
+
+Among his epistles of the year there is one which might of itself have
+sufficed to bring down his name to posterity. This is a long letter,
+full of advice, to his brother Quintus, who had gone out in the previous
+year to govern the province of Asia as Proprętor. We may say that good
+advice could never have been more wanted, and that better advice could
+not have been given. It has been suggested that it was written as a
+companion to that treatise on the duties of a candidate which Quintus
+composed for his brother's service when standing for his Consulship. But
+I cannot admit the analogy. The composition attributed to Quintus
+contained lessons of advice equally suitable to any candidate, sprung
+from the people, striving to rise to high honors in the State. This
+letter is adapted not only to the special position of Quintus, but to
+the peculiarities of his character, and its strength lies in this: that
+while the one brother praises the other, justly praises him, as I
+believe, for many virtues, so as to make the receipt of it acceptable,
+it points out faults--faults which will become fatal, if not amended--in
+language which is not only strong but unanswerable.
+
+The style of this letter is undoubtedly very different from that of
+Cicero's letters generally--so as to suggest to the reader that it must
+have been composed expressly for publication whereas the daily
+correspondence is written "currente calamo," with no other than the
+immediate idea of amusing, instructing, or perhaps comforting the
+correspondent. Hence has come the comparison between this and the
+treatise De Petitione Consulatus. I think that the gravity of the
+occasion, rather than any regard for posterity, produced the change of
+style. Cicero found it to be essential to induce his brother to remain
+at his post, not to throw up his government in disgust, and so to bear
+himself that he should not make himself absolutely odious to his own
+staff and to other Romans around him; for Quintus Cicero, though he had
+been proud and arrogant and ill tempered, had not made himself notorious
+by the ordinary Roman propensity to plunder his province "What is it
+that is required of you as a governor?"[245] asks Cicero. "That men
+should not be frightened by your journeys hither and thither--that they
+should not be eaten up by your extravagance--that they should not be
+disturbed by your coming among them--that there should be joy at your
+approach; when each city should think that its guardian angel, not a
+cruel master, had come upon it--when each house should feel that it
+entertained not a robber but a friend. Practice has made you perfect in
+this. But it is not enough that you should exercise those good offices
+yourself, but that you should take care that every one of those who come
+with you should seem to do his best for the inhabitants of the province,
+for the citizen of Rome, and for the Republic." I wish that I could give
+the letter entire--both in English, that all readers might know how
+grand are the precepts taught, and in Latin, that they who understand
+the language might appreciate the beauty of the words--but I do not dare
+to fill my pages at such length. A little farther on he gives his idea
+of the duty of all those who have power over others--even over the dumb
+animals.[246] "To me it seems that the duty of those in authority over
+others consists in making those who are under them as happy as the
+nature of things will allow. Every one knows that you have acted on this
+principle since you first went to Asia." This, I fear, must be taken as
+flattery, intended to gild the pill which comes afterward "This is not
+only his duty who has under him allies and citizens, but is also that of
+the man who has slaves under his control, and even dumb cattle, that he
+should study the welfare of all over whom he stands in the position of
+master!" Let the reader look into this, and ask himself what precepts of
+Christianity have ever surpassed it.
+
+Then he points out that which he describes as the one great difficulty
+in the career of a Roman Provincial Governor.[247] The collectors of
+taxes, or "publicani," were of the equestrian order. This business of
+farming the taxes had been their rich privilege for at any rate more
+than a century, and as Cicero says, farther on in his letter, it was
+impossible not to know with what hardship the Greek allies would be
+treated by them when so many stories were current of their cruelty even
+in Italy. Were Quintus to take a part against these tax-gatherers, he
+would make them hostile not only to the Republic but to himself also,
+and also to his brother Marcus; for they were of the equestrian order,
+and specially connected with these "publicani" by family ties. He
+implies, as he goes on, that it will be easier to teach the Greeks to be
+submissive than the tax-gatherers to be moderate. After all, where would
+the Greeks of Asia be if they had no Roman master to afford them
+protection? He leaves the matter in the hands of his brother, with
+advice that he should do the best he can on one side and on the other.
+If possible, let the greed of the "publicani" be restrained; but let the
+ally be taught to understand that there may be usage in the world worse
+even than Roman taxation. It would be hardly worth our while to allude
+to this part of Cicero's advice, did it not give an insight into the
+mode in which Rome taxed her subject people.
+
+After this he commences that portion of the letter for the sake of which
+we cannot but believe that the whole was written. "There is one thing,"
+he says, "which I will never cease to din into your ears, because I
+could not endure to think that, amid the praises which are lavished on
+you, there should be any matter in which you should be found wanting.
+All who come to us here"--all who come to Rome from Asia, that is--"when
+they tell us of your honesty and goodness of heart, tell us also that
+you fail in temper. It is a vice which, in the daily affairs of private
+life, betokens a weak and unmanly spirit; but there can be nothing so
+poor as the exhibition of the littleness of nature in those who have
+risen to the dignity of command." He will not, he goes on to say,
+trouble his brother with repeating all that the wise men have said on
+the subject of anger; he is sure that Quintus is well acquainted with
+all that. But is it not a pity, when all men say that nothing could be
+pleasanter than Quintus Cicero when in a good-humor, the same Quintus
+should allow himself to be so provoked that his want of kindly manners
+should be regretted by all around him? "I cannot assert," he goes on to
+say, "that when nature has produced a certain condition of mind, and
+that years as they run on have strengthened it, a man can change all
+that and pluck out from his very self the habits that have grown within
+him; yet I must tell you that if you cannot eschew this evil
+altogether--if you cannot protect yourself against the feeling of anger,
+yet you should prepare yourself to be ready for it when it comes, so
+that, when your very soul within you is hot with it, your tongue, at any
+rate, may be restrained." Then toward the end of the letter there is a
+fraternal exhortation which is surely very fine: "Since chance has
+thrown into my way the duties of official life in Rome, and into yours
+that of administrating provincial government, if I, in the performance
+of my work, have been second to none, do you see that you in yours may
+be equally efficient." How grand, from an elder brother to a younger!
+"And remember this, that you and I have not to strive after some
+excellence still unattained, but have to be on our watch to guard that
+which has been already won. If I should find myself in anything divided
+from you, I should desire no further advance in life. Unless your deeds
+and your words go on all-fours with mine, I should feel that I had
+achieved nothing by all the work and all the dangers which you and I
+have encountered together." The brother at last was found to be a poor,
+envious, ill-conditioned creature--intellectually gifted, and capable of
+borrowing something from his brother's nobler nature; but when struggles
+came, and political feuds, and the need of looking about to see on which
+side safety lay, ready to sacrifice his brother for the sake of safety.
+But up to this time Marcus was prepared to believe all good of Quintus;
+and having made for himself and for the family a great name, was
+desirous of sharing it with his brother, and, as we shall afterward see,
+with his brother's son, and with his own. In this he failed. He lived to
+know that he had failed as regarded his brother and his nephew. It was
+not, however, added to his misery to live to learn how little his son
+was to do to maintain the honor of his family.
+
+I find a note scribbled by myself some years ago in a volume in which I
+had read this epistle, "Probably the most beautiful letter ever
+written." Reading it again subsequently, I added another note, "The
+language altogether different from that of his ordinary letters." I do
+not dissent now either from the enthusiastic praise or the more careful
+criticism. The letter was from the man's heart--true, affectionate, and
+full of anxious, brotherly duty--but written in studied language,
+befitting, as Cicero thought, the need and the dignity of the occasion.
+
+[Sidenote: B.C. 59, ętat. 48.]
+
+The year following was that of Cęsar's first Consulship, which he held
+in conjunction with Bibulus, a man who was altogether opposed to him in
+thought, in character, and in action. So hostile were these two great
+officers to each other that the one attempted to undo whatever the other
+did. Bibulus was elected by bribery, on behalf of the Senate, in order
+that he might be a counterpoise to Cęsar. But Cęsar now was not only
+Cęsar: he was Cęsar, Pompey, and Crassus united, with all their
+dependents, all their clients, all their greedy hangers-on. To give this
+compact something of the strength of family union, Pompey, who was now
+nearly fifty years of age, took in marriage Cęsar's daughter Julia, who
+was a quarter of a century his junior. But Pompey was a man who could
+endear himself to women, and the opinion seems to be general that had
+not Julia died in childbirth the friendship between the men would have
+been more lasting. But for Cęsar's purposes the duration of this year
+and the next was enough. Bibulus was a laughing-stock, the mere shadow
+of a Consul, when opposed to such an enemy. He tried to use all the old
+forms of the Republic with the object of stopping Cęsar in his career;
+but Cęsar only ridiculed him; and Pompey, though we can imagine that he
+did not laugh much, did as Cęsar would have him. Bibulus was an augur,
+and observed the heavens when political man[oe]uvres were going on which
+he wished to stop. This was the old Roman system for using religion as a
+drag upon progressive movements. No work of state could be carried on if
+the heavens were declared to be unpropitious; and an augur could always
+say that the heavens were unpropitious if he pleased. This was the
+recognized constitutional mode of obstruction, and was quite in accord
+with the feelings of the people. Pompey alone, or Crassus with him,
+would certainly have submitted to an augur; but Cęsar was above augurs.
+Whatever he chose to have carried he carried, with what approach he
+could to constitutional usage, but with whatever departure from
+constitutional usage he found to be necessary.
+
+What was the condition of the people of Rome at the time it is difficult
+to learn from the conflicting statements of historians. That Cicero had
+till lately been popular we know. We are told that Bibulus was popular
+when he opposed Cęsar. Of personal popularity up to this time I doubt
+whether Cęsar had achieved much. Yet we learn that, when Bibulus with
+Cato and Lucullus endeavored to carry out their constitutional threats,
+they were dragged and knocked about, and one of them nearly killed. Of
+the illegality of Cęsar's proceedings there can be no doubt. "The
+tribunitian veto was interposed; Cęsar contented himself with
+disregarding it."[248] This is quoted from the German historian, who
+intends to leave an impression that Cęsar was great and wise in all that
+he did; and who tells us also of the "obstinate, weak creature Bibulus,"
+and of "the dogmatical fool Cato." I doubt whether there was anything of
+true popular ferment, or that there was any commotion except that which
+was made by the "roughs" who had attached themselves for pay to Cęsar or
+to Pompey, or to Crassus, or, as it might be, to Bibulus and the other
+leaders. The violence did not amount to more than "nearly" killing this
+man or the other. Some Roman street fights were no doubt more bloody--as
+for instance that in which, seven years afterward, Clodius was
+slaughtered by Milo--but the blood was made to flow, not by the people,
+but by hired bravoes. The Roman citizens of the day were, I think, very
+quiescent. Neither pride nor misery stirred them much. Cęsar, perceiving
+this, was aware that he might disregard Bibulus and his auguries so long
+as he had a band of ruffians around him sufficient for the purposes of
+the hour. It was in order that he might thus prevail that the coalition
+had been made with Pompey and Crassus. His colleague Bibulus, seeing how
+matters were going, retired to his own house, and there went through a
+farce of consular enactments. Cęsar carried all his purposes, and the
+people were content to laugh, dividing him into two personages, and
+talking of Julius and Cęsar as the two Consuls of the year. It was in
+this way that he procured to be allotted to him by the people his
+irregular command in Gaul. He was to be Proconsul, not for one year,
+with perhaps a prolongation for two or three, but for an established
+period of five. He was to have the great province of Cisalpine
+Gaul--that is to say, the whole of what we now call Italy, from the foot
+of the Alps down to a line running from sea to sea just north of
+Florence. To this Transalpine Gaul was afterward added. The province so
+named, possessed at the time by the Romans, was called "Narbonensis," a
+country comparatively insignificant, running from the Alps to the
+Pyrenees along the Mediterranean. The Gaul or Gallia of which Cęsar
+speaks when, in the opening words of his Commentary, he tells us that it
+was divided into three parts, was altogether beyond the Roman province
+which was assigned to him. Cęsar, when he undertook his government, can
+hardly have dreamed of subjecting to Roman rule the vast territories
+which were then known as Gallia, beyond the frontiers of the Empire, and
+which we now call France.
+
+But he caused himself to be supported by an enormous army. There were
+stationed three legions on the Italian side of the Alps, and one on the
+other. These were all to be under his command for five years certain,
+and amounted to a force of not less than thirty thousand men. "As no
+troops could constitutionally be stationed in Italy proper, the
+commander of the legions of Northern Italy and Gaul," says Mommsen,
+"dominated at the same time Italy and Rome for the next five years; and
+he who was master for five years was master for life."[249]
+
+[Sidenote: B.C. 59, ętat. 48.]
+
+Such was the condition of Rome during the second year of the
+Triumvirate, in which Cęsar was Consul and prepared the way for the
+powers which he afterward exercised. Cicero would not come to his call;
+and therefore, as we are told, Clodius was let loose upon him. As he
+would not come to Cęsar's call, it was necessary that he should be
+suppressed, and Clodius, notwithstanding all constitutional
+difficulties--nay, impossibilities--was made Tribune of the people.
+Things had now so far advanced with a Cęsar that a Cicero who would not
+come to his call must be disposed of after some fashion.
+
+Till we have thought much of it, often of it, till we have looked
+thoroughly into it, we find ourselves tempted to marvel at Cicero's
+blindness. Surely a man so gifted must have known enough of the state of
+Rome to have been aware that there was no room left for one honest,
+patriotic, constitutional politician. Was it not plain to him that if,
+"natus ad justitiam," he could not bring himself to serve with those who
+were intent on discarding the Republic, he had better retire among his
+books, his busts, and his literary luxuries, and leave the government of
+the country to those who understood its people? And we are the more
+prone to say and to think all this because the man himself continually
+said it, and continually thought it. In one of the letters written early
+in the year[250] to Atticus from his villa at Antium he declares very
+plainly how it is with him; and this, too, in a letter written in
+good-humor, not in a despondent frame of mind, in which he is able
+pleasantly to ridicule his enemy Clodius, who it seems had expressed a
+wish to go on an embassy to Tigranes, King of Armenia. "Do not think,"
+he says, "that I am complaining of all this because I myself am desirous
+of being engaged in public affairs. Even while it was mine to sit at the
+helm I was tired of the work; but now, when I am in truth driven out of
+the ship, when the rudder has not been thrown down but seized out of my
+hands, how should I take a pleasure in looking from the shore at the
+wrecks which these other pilots have made?" But the study of human
+nature tells us, and all experience, that men are unable to fathom their
+own desires, and fail to govern themselves by the wisdom which is at
+their fingers' ends. The retiring Prime-minister cannot but hanker after
+the seals and the ribbons and the titles of office, even though his soul
+be able to rise above considerations of emolument, and there will creep
+into a man's mind an idea that, though reform of abuses from other
+sources may be impossible, if he were there once more the evil could at
+least be mitigated, might possibly be cured. So it was during this
+period of his life with Cicero. He did believe that political justice
+exercised by himself, with such assistance as his eloquence would obtain
+for it, might be efficacious for preserving the Republic, in spite of
+Cęsar, and of Pompey, and of Crassus. He did not yet believe that these
+men would consent to such an outrage as his banishment. It must have
+been incredible to him that Pompey should assent to it. When the blow
+came, it crushed him for the time. But he retricked his beams and
+struggled on to the end, as we shall see if we follow his life to the
+close.
+
+Such was the intended purpose of the degradation of Clodius. This,
+however, was not at once declared. It was said that Clodius as Tribune
+intended rather to oppose Cęsar than to assist him. He at any rate chose
+that Cicero should so believe and sent Curio, a young man to whom Cicero
+was attached, to visit the orator at his villa at Antium and to declare
+these friendly purposes. According to the story told by Cicero,[251]
+Clodius was prepared to oppose the Triumvirate; and the other young men
+of Rome, the _jeunesse dorée_, of which both Curio and Clodius were
+members, were said to be equally hostile to Cęsar, Pompey, and Crassus,
+whose doings in opposition to the constitution were already evident
+enough; so that it suited Cicero to believe that the rising aristocracy
+of Rome would oppose them. But the aristocracy of Rome, whether old or
+young, cared for nothing but its fish-ponds and its amusements.
+
+Cicero spent the earlier part of the year out of Rome, among his various
+villas--at Tusculanum, at Antium, and at Formię. The purport of all his
+letters at this period is the same--to complain of the condition of the
+Republic, and especially of the treachery of his friend Pompey. Though
+there be much of despondency in his tone, there is enough also of high
+spirit to make us feel that his literary aspirations are not out of
+place, though mingled with his political wailing. The time will soon
+come when his trust even in literature will fail him for a while.
+
+Early in the year he declares that he would like to accept a mission to
+Egypt, offered to him by Cęsar and Pompey, partly in order that he might
+for a while be quit of Rome, and partly that Romans might feel how ill
+they could do without him. He then uses for the first time, as far as I
+am aware, a line from the Iliad,[252] which is repeated by him again and
+again, in part or in whole, to signify the restraint which is placed on
+him by his own high character among his fellow-citizens. "I would go to
+Egypt on this pleasant excursion, but that I fear what the men of Troy,
+and the Trojan women, with their wide-sweeping robes, would say of me."
+And what, he asks, would the men of our party, "the optimates," say? and
+what would Cato say, whose opinion is more to me than that of them all?
+And how would history tell the story in future ages? But he would like
+to go to Egypt, and he will wait and see. Then, after various questions
+to Atticus, comes that great one as to the augurship, of which so much
+has been made by Cicero's enemies, "quo quidem uno ego ab istis capi
+possim." A few lines above he had been speaking of another lure, that of
+the mission to Egypt. He discusses that with his friend, and then goes
+on in his half-joking phrase, "but this would have been the real thing
+to catch me." Nothing caught him. He was steadfast all through,
+accepting no offer of place from the conspirators by which his integrity
+or his honor could be soiled. That it was so was well known to history
+in the time of Quintilian, whose testimony as to the "repudiatus
+vigintiviratus"--his refusal of a place among the twenty
+commissioners--has been already quoted.[253] And yet biographers have
+written of him as of one willing to sell his honor, his opinions, and
+the commonwealth, for a "pitiful bribe;" not that he did do so, not that
+he attempted to do it, but because in a half-joking letter to the friend
+of his bosom he tells his friend which way his tastes lay![254]
+
+He had been thinking of writing a book on geography, and consulted
+Atticus on the subject; but in one of his letters he tells his friend
+that he had abandoned the idea. The subject was too dull; and if he took
+one side in a dispute that was existing, he would be sure to fall under
+the lash of the critics on the other. He is enjoying his leisure at
+Antium, and thinks it a much better place than Rome. If the weather will
+not let him catch fish, at any rate he can count the waves. In all these
+letters Cicero asks questions about his money and his private affairs;
+about the mending of a wall, perhaps, and adds something about his wife
+or daughter or son. He is going from Antium to Formię, but must return
+to Antium by a certain date because Tullia wants to see the games.
+
+Then again he alludes to Clodius. Pompey had made a compact with
+Clodius--so at least Cicero had heard--that he, Clodius, if elected for
+the Tribunate, would do nothing to injure Cicero. The assurance of such
+a compact had no doubt been spread about for the quieting of Cicero; but
+no such compact had been intended to be kept, unless Cicero would be
+amenable, would take some of the good things offered to him, or at any
+rate hold his peace. But Cicero affects to hope that no such agreement
+may be kept. He is always nicknaming Pompey, who during his Eastern
+campaign had taken Jerusalem, and who now parodies the Africanus, the
+Asiaticus, and the Macedonicus of the Scipios and Metelluses. "If that
+Hierosolymarian candidate for popularity does not keep his word with me,
+I shall be delighted. If that be his return for my speeches on his
+behalf"--the Anteponatur omnibus Pompeius, for instance--"I will play
+him such a turn of another kind that he shall remember it."[255]
+
+He begins to know what the "Triumvirate" is doing with the Republic, but
+has not yet brought himself to suspect the blow that is to fall on
+himself. "They are going along very gayly," he says, "and do not make as
+much noise as one would have expected."[256] If Cato had been more on
+the alert, things would not have gone so quickly; but the dishonesty of
+others, who have allowed all the laws to be ignored, has been worse than
+Cato. If we used to feel that the Senate took too much on itself, what
+shall we say when that power has been transferred, not to the people,
+but to three utterly unscrupulous men? "They can make whom they will
+Consuls, whom they will Tribunes--so that they may hide the very goitre
+of Vatinius under a priest's robe." For himself, Cicero says, he will be
+contented to remain with his books, if only Clodius will allow him; if
+not, he will defend himself.[257] As for his country, he has done more
+for his country than has even been desired of him; and he thinks it to
+be better to leave the helm in the hands of pilots, however incompetent,
+than himself to steer when passengers are so thankless. Then we find
+that he robs poor Tullia of her promised pleasure at the games, because
+it will be beneath his dignity to appear at them. He is always very
+anxious for his friend's letters, depending on them for news and for
+amusement. "My messenger will return at once," he says, in one;
+"therefore, though you are coming yourself very soon, send me a heavy
+letter, full not only of news but of your own ideas."[258] In another:
+"Cicero the Little sends greeting," he says, in Greek, "to Titus the
+Athenian"--that is, to Titus Pomponius Atticus. The Greek letters were
+probably traced by the child at his father's knee as Cicero held the pen
+or the stylus. In another letter he declares that there, at Formię,
+Pompey's name of Magnus is no more esteemed than that of Dives belonging
+to Crassus. In the next he calls Pompey Sampsiceramus. We learn from
+Josephus that there was a lady afterward in the East in the time of
+Vitellius, who was daughter of Sampsigeramus, King of the Emesi. It
+might probably be a royal family name.[259] In choosing the absurd
+title, he is again laughing at his party leader. Pompey had probably
+boasted of his doings with the Sampsiceramus of the day and the priests
+of Jerusalem. "When this Sampsiceramus of ours finds how ill he is
+spoken of, he will rush headlong into revolution." He complains that he
+can do nothing at Formię because of the visitors. No English poet was
+ever so interviewed by American admirers. They came at all hours, in
+numbers sufficient to fill a temple, let alone a gentleman's house. How
+can he write anything requiring leisure in such a condition as this?
+Nevertheless he will attempt something. He goes on criticising all that
+is done in Rome, especially what is done by Pompey, who no doubt was
+vacillating sadly between Cęsar, to whom he was bound, and Bibulus, the
+other Consul, to whom he ought to have been bound, as being naturally on
+the aristocratic side. He cannot for a moment keep his pen from public
+matters; nor, on the other hand, can he refrain from declaring that he
+will apply himself wholly, undividedly, to his literature. "Therefore,
+oh my Titus, let me settle down to these glorious occupations, and
+return to that which, if I had been wise, I never should have
+left."[260] A day or two afterward, writing from the same place, he asks
+what Arabarches is saying of him. Arabarches is another name for
+Pompey--this Arabian chieftain.
+
+In the early summer of this year Cicero returned to Rome, probably in
+time to see Atticus, who was then about to leave the city for his
+estates in Epirus. We have a letter written by him to his friend on the
+journey, telling us that Cęsar had made him two distinct offers,
+evidently with the view of getting rid of him, but in such a manner as
+would be gratifying to Cicero himself.[261] Cęsar asks him to go with
+him to Gaul as his lieutenant, or, if that will not suit him, to accept
+a "free legation for the sake of paying a vow." This latter was a kind
+of job by which Roman Senators got themselves sent forth on their
+private travels with all the appanages of a Senator travelling on public
+business. We have his argument as to both. Elsewhere he objects to a
+"libera legatio" as being a job.[262] Here he only points out that,
+though it enforce his absence from Rome at a time disagreeable to
+him--just when his brother Quintus would return--it would not give him
+the protection which he needs. Though he were travelling about the world
+as a Senator on some pretended embassy, he would still be open to the
+attacks of Clodius. He would necessarily be absent, or he would not be
+in enjoyment of his privilege, but by his very absence he would find his
+position weakened; whereas, as Cęsar's appointed lieutenant, he need not
+leave the city at once, and in that position he would be quite safe
+against all that Clodius or other enemies could do to him.[263] No
+indictment could be made against a Roman while he was in the employment
+of the State. It must be remembered, too, on judging of these overtures,
+that both the one and the other--and indeed all the offers then made to
+him--were deemed to be highly honorable, as Rome then existed. "The free
+legation"--the "libera legatio voti causa"--had no reference to parties.
+It was a job, no doubt, and, in the hands of the ordinary Roman
+aristocrat, likely to be very onerous to the provincials among whom the
+privileged Senator might travel; but it entailed no party adhesion. In
+this case it was intended only to guarantee the absence of a man who
+might be troublesome in Rome. The other was the offer of genuine work in
+which politics were not at all concerned. Such a position was accepted
+by Quintus, our Cicero's brother, and in performance of the duties which
+fell to him he incurred terrible danger, having been nearly destroyed by
+the Gauls in his winter quarters among the Nervii. Labienus, who was
+Cęsar's right-hand man in Gaul, was of the same politics as Cicero--so
+much so that when Cęsar rebelled against the Republic, Labienus, true to
+the Republic, would no longer fight on Cęsar's side. It was open to
+Cicero, without disloyalty, to accept the offer made to him; but with an
+insight into what was coming, of which he himself was hardly conscious,
+he could not bring himself to accept offers which in themselves were
+alluring, but which would seem in future times to have implied on his
+part an assent to the breaking up of the Republic. [Greek: Aideomai
+Trōas kai Trōadas elkesipeplous.] What will be said of me in history by
+my citizens if I now do simply that which may best suit my own
+happiness? Had he done so, Pliny and the others would not have spoken of
+him as they have spoken, and it would not have been worth the while of
+modern lovers of Cęsarism to write books against the one patriot of his
+age.
+
+During the remainder of this year, B.C. 59, Cicero was at Rome, and
+seems gradually to have become aware that a personal attack was to be
+made upon him. At the close of a long and remarkable letter written to
+his brother Quintus in November, he explains the state of his own mind,
+showing us, who have now before us the future which was hidden from him,
+how greatly mistaken he was as to the results which were to be expected.
+He had been telling his brother how nearly Cato had been murdered for
+calling Pompey, in public, a Dictator. Then he goes on to describe his
+own condition.[264] "You may see from this what is the state of the
+Republic. As far as I am concerned, it seems that friends will not be
+wanting to defend me. They offer themselves in a wonderful way, and
+promise assistance. I feel great hope and still greater spirit--hope,
+which tells me that we shall be victors in the struggle; spirit, which
+bids me fear no casualty in the present state of public affairs."[265]
+But the matter stands in this way: "If he"--that is, Clodius--"should
+indict me in court, all Italy would come to my defence, so that I should
+be acquitted with honor. Should he attack me with open violence, I
+should have, I think, not only my own party but the world at large to
+stand by me. All men promise me their friends, their clients, their
+freedmen, their slaves, and even their money. Our old body of
+aristocrats"--Cato, Bibulus, and the makers of fish-ponds
+generally--"are wonderfully warm in my cause. If any of these have
+heretofore been remiss, now they join our party from sheer hatred of
+these kings"--the Triumvirs. "Pompey promises everything, and so does
+Cęsar, whom I only trust so far as I can see them." Even the Triumvirs
+promise him that he will be safe; but his belief in Pompey's honesty is
+all but gone. "The coming Tribunes are my friends. The Consuls of next
+year promise well." He was wofully mistaken. "We have excellent Prętors,
+citizens alive to their duty. Domitius, Nigidius, Memmius, and Lentulus
+are specially trustworthy. The others are good men. You may therefore
+pluck up your courage and be confident." From this we perceive that he
+had already formed the idea that he might perhaps be required to fight
+for his position as a Roman citizen; and it seems also that he
+understood the cause of the coming conflict. The intention was that he
+should be driven out of Rome by personal enmity. Nothing is said in any
+of these letters of the excuse to be used, though he knew well what that
+excuse was to be. He was to be charged by the Patrician Tribune with
+having put Roman citizens to death in opposition to the law. But there
+arises at this time no question whether he had or had not been justified
+in what he, as Consul, had done to Lentulus and the others. Would
+Clodius be able to rouse a mob against him? and, if so, would Cęsar
+assist Clodius? or would Pompey who still loomed to his eyes as the
+larger of the two men? He had ever been the friend of Pompey, and Pompey
+had promised him all manner of assistance; but he knew already that
+Pompey would turn upon him. That Rome should turn upon him--Rome which
+he had preserved from the torches of Catiline's conspirators--that he
+could not bring himself to believe!
+
+We must not pass over this long letter to Quintus without observing that
+through it all the evil condition of the younger brother's mind becomes
+apparent. The severity of his administration had given offence. His
+punishments had been cruel. His letters had been rash, and his language
+violent. In short, we gather from the brother's testimony that Quintus
+Cicero was very ill-fitted to be the civil governor of a province.
+
+The only work which we have from Cicero belonging to this year, except
+his letters, is the speech, or part of the speech, he made for Lucius
+Valerius Flaccus. Flaccus had been Prętor when Cicero was Consul, and
+had done good service, in the eyes of his superior officers, in the
+matter of the Catiline conspiracy. He had then gone to Asia as governor,
+and, after the Roman manner, had fleeced the province. That this was so
+there is no doubt. After his return he was accused, was defended by
+Cicero, and was acquitted. Macrobius tells us that Cicero, by the
+happiness of a bon-mot, brought the accused off safely, though he was
+manifestly guilty. He adds also that Cicero took care not to allow the
+joke to appear in the published edition of his speech.[266] There are
+parts of the speech which have been preserved, and are sufficiently
+amusing even to us. He is very hard upon the Greeks of Asia, the class
+from which the witnesses against Flaccus were taken. We know here in
+England that a spaniel, a wife, and a walnut-tree may be beaten with
+advantage. Cicero says that in Asia there is a proverb that a Phrygian
+may be improved in the same way. "Fiat experimentum in corpore vili." It
+is declared through Asia that you should take a Carian for your
+experiment. The "last of the Mysians" is the well-known Asiatic term for
+the lowest type of humanity. Look through all the comedies, you will
+find the leading slave is a Lydian. Then he turns to these poor
+Asiatics, and asks them whether any one can be expected to think well of
+them, when such is their own testimony of themselves! He attacks the
+Jew, and speaks of the Jewish religion as a superstition worthy in
+itself of no consideration. Pompey had spared the gold in the Temple of
+Jerusalem, because he thought it wise to respect the religious
+prejudices of the people; but the gods themselves had shown, by
+subjecting the Jews to the Romans, how little the gods had regarded
+these idolatrous worshippers! Such were the arguments used; and they
+prevailed with the judges--or jury, we should rather call them--to whom
+they were addressed.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII.
+
+_HIS EXILE._
+
+
+We now come to that period of Cicero's life in which, by common consent
+of all who have hitherto written of him, he is supposed to have shown
+himself as least worthy of his high name. Middleton, who certainly loved
+his hero's memory and was always anxious to do him justice, condemns
+him. "It cannot be denied that in this calamity of his exile he did not
+behave himself with that firmness which might reasonably be expected
+from one who had borne so glorious a part in the Republic." Morabin, the
+French biographer, speaks of the wailings of his grief, of its injustice
+and its follies. "Cicéron était trop plein de son malheur pour donner
+entrée ą de nouvelles espérances," he says. "Il avait supporté ce
+malheur avec peu de courage," says another Frenchman, M. Du Rozoir, in
+introducing us to the speeches which Cicero made on his return. Dean
+Merivale declares that "he marred the grace of the concession in the
+eyes of posterity"--alluding to the concession made to popular feeling
+by his voluntary departure from Rome, as will hereafter be
+described--"by the unmanly lamentations with which he accompanied it."
+Mommsen, with a want of insight into character wonderful in an author
+who has so closely studied the history of the period, speaks of his
+exile as a punishment inflicted on a "man notoriously timid, and
+belonging to the class of political weather-cocks." "We now come," says
+Mr. Forsyth, "to the most melancholy period of Cicero's life, melancholy
+not so much from its nature and the extent of the misfortunes which
+overtook him, as from the abject prostration of mind into which he was
+thrown." Mr. Froude, as might be expected, uses language stronger than
+that of others, and tells us that "he retired to Macedonia to pour out
+his sorrows and his resentments in lamentations unworthy of a woman." We
+have to admit that modern historians and biographers have been united in
+accusing Cicero of want of manliness during his exile. I propose--not,
+indeed, to wash the blackamoor white--but to show, if I can, that he was
+as white as others might be expected to have been in similar
+circumstances.
+
+We are, I think, somewhat proud of the courage shown by public men of
+our country who have suffered either justly or unjustly under the laws.
+Our annals are bloody, and many such have had to meet their death. They
+have done so generally with becoming manliness. Even though they may
+have been rebels against the powers of the day, their memories have been
+made green because they have fallen like brave men. Sir Thomas More, who
+was no rebel, died well, and crowned a good life by his manner of
+leaving it. Thomas Cromwell submitted to the axe without a complaint.
+Lady Jane Grey, when on the scaffold, yielded nothing in manliness to
+the others. Cranmer and the martyr bishops perished nobly. The Earl of
+Essex, and Raleigh, and Strafford, and Strafford's master showed no fear
+when the fatal moment came. In reading the fate of each, we sympathize
+with the victim because of a certain dignity at the moment of death. But
+there is, I think, no crisis of life in which it is so easy for a man to
+carry himself honorably as that in which he has to leave it. "Venit
+summa dies et ineluctabile tempus." No doubting now can be of avail. No
+moment is left for the display of conduct beyond this, which requires
+only decorum and a free use of the pulses to become in some degree
+glorious. The wretch from the lowest dregs of the people can achieve it
+with a halter round his neck. Cicero had that moment also to face; and
+when it came he was as brave as the best Englishman of them all. But of
+those I have named no one had an Atticus to whom it had been the
+privilege of his life to open his very soul, in language so charming as
+to make it worth posterity's while to read it, to study it, to sift it,
+and to criticise it. Wolsey made many plaints in his misery, but they
+have reached us in such forms of grace that they do not disparage him;
+but then he too had no Atticus. Shaftesbury and Bolingbroke were
+dismissed ministers and doomed to live in exile, the latter for many
+years, and felt, no doubt, strongly their removal from the glare of
+public life to obscurity. We hear no complaint from them which can
+justify some future critic in saying that their wails were unworthy of a
+woman; but neither of them was capable of telling an Atticus the
+thoughts of his mind as they rose. What other public man ever had an
+Atticus to whom, in the sorrows which the ingratitude of friends had
+brought upon him, he could disclose every throb of his heart?
+
+I think that we are often at a loss, in our efforts at appreciation of
+character, and in the expressions of our opinion respecting it, to
+realize the meaning of courage and manliness. That sententious Swedish
+Queen, one of whose foolish maxims I have quoted, has said that Cicero,
+though a coward, was capable of great actions, because she did not know
+what a coward was. To doubt--to tremble with anxiety--to vacillate
+hither and thither between this course and the other as to which may be
+the better--to complain within one's own breast that this or that thing
+has been an injustice--to hesitate within one's self, not quite knowing
+which way honor may require us to go--to be indignant even at fancied
+wrongs--to rise in wrath against another, and then, before the hour has
+passed, to turn that wrath against one's self--that is not to be a
+coward. To know what duty requires, and then to be deterred by fear of
+results--that is to be a coward; but the man of many scruples may be the
+greatest hero of them all. Let the law of things be declared clearly so
+that the doubting mind shall no longer doubt, so that scruples may be
+laid at rest, so that the sense of justice may be satisfied--and he of
+whom I speak shall be ready to meet the world in arms against him. There
+are men, very useful in their way, who shall never doubt at all, but
+shall be ready, as the bull is ready, to encounter any obstacles that
+there may be before them. I will not say but that for the coarse
+purposes of the world they may not be the most efficacious, but I will
+not admit that they are therefore the bravest. The bull, who has no
+imagination to tell him what the obstacle may do to him, is not brave.
+He is brave who, fully understanding the potentiality of the obstacle,
+shall, for a sufficient purpose, move against it.
+
+This Cicero always did. He braved the murderous anger of Sulla when, as
+a young man, he thought it well to stop the greed of Sulla's minions. He
+trusted himself amid the dangers prepared for him, when it was necessary
+that with extraordinary speed he should get together the evidence needed
+for the prosecution of Verres. He was firm against all that Catiline
+attempted for his destruction, and had courage enough for the
+responsibility when he thought it expedient to doom the friends of
+Catiline to death. In defending Milo, whether the cause were good or
+bad, he did not blench.[267] He joined the Republican army in Macedonia
+though he distrusted Pompey and his companions. When he thought that
+there was a hope for the Republic, he sprung at Antony with all the
+courage of a tigress protecting her young; and when all had failed and
+was rotten around him, when the Republic had so fallen that he knew it
+to be gone--then he was able to give his neck to the swordsman with all
+the apparent indifference of life which was displayed by those
+countrymen of our own whom I have named.
+
+But why did he write so piteously when he was driven into exile? Why, at
+any rate, did he turn upon his chosen friend and scold him, as though
+that friend had not done enough for friendship? Why did he talk of
+suicide as though by that he might find the easiest way of escape?
+
+I hold it to be natural that a man should wail to himself under a sense,
+not simply of misfortune, but of misfortune coming to him from the
+injustice of others, and specially from the ingratitude of friends.
+Afflictions which come to us from natural causes, such as sickness and
+physical pain, or from some chance such as the loss of our money by the
+breaking of a bank, an heroic man will bear without even inward
+complainings. But a sense of wrong done to him by friends will stir him,
+not by the misery inflicted, but because of the injustice; and that
+which he says to himself he will say to his wife, if his wife be to him
+a second self, or to his friend, if he have one so dear to him. The
+testimony by which the writers I have named have been led to treat
+Cicero so severely has been found in the letters which he wrote during
+his exile; and of these letters all but one were addressed either to
+Atticus or to his wife or to his brother.[268] Twenty-seven of them were
+to Atticus. Before he accepted a voluntary exile, as the best solution
+of the difficulty in which he was placed--for it was voluntary at first,
+as will be seen--he applied to the Consul Piso for aid, and for the same
+purpose visited Pompey. So far he was a suppliant, but this he did in
+conformity with Roman usage. In asking favor of a man in power there was
+held to be no disgrace, even though the favor asked were one improper to
+be granted, which was not the case with Cicero. And he went about the
+Forum in mourning--"sordidatus"--as was the custom with men on their
+trial. We cannot doubt that in each of these cases he acted with the
+advice of his friends. His conduct and his words after his return from
+exile betray exultation rather than despondency.
+
+It is from the letters which he wrote to Atticus that he has been
+judged--from words boiling with indignation that such a one as he should
+have been surrendered by the Rome that he had saved, by those friends to
+whom he had been so true to be trampled on by such a one as Clodius!
+When a man has written words intended for the public ear, it is fair
+that he should bear the brunt of them, be it what it may. He has
+intended them for public effect, and if they are used against him he
+should not complain. But here the secret murmurings of the man's soul
+were sent forth to his choicest friend, with no idea that from them
+would he be judged by the "historians to come in 600 years,"[269] of
+whose good word he thought so much. "Quid vero historię de nobis ad
+annos DC. prędicarint!" he says, to Atticus. How is it that from them,
+after 2000 years, the Merivales, Mommsens, and Froudes condemn their
+great brother in letters whose lightest utterances have been found
+worthy of so long a life! Is there not an injustice in falling upon a
+man's private words, words when written intended only for privacy, and
+making them the basis of an accusation in which an illustrious man shall
+be arraigned forever as a coward? It is said that he was unjust even to
+Atticus, accusing even Atticus of lukewarmness. What if he did so--for
+an hour? Is that an affair of ours? Did Atticus quarrel with him? Let
+any reader of these words who has lived long enough to have an old
+friend, ask himself whether there has never been a moment of anger in
+his heart--of anger of which he has soon learned to recognize the
+injustice? He may not have written his anger, but then, perhaps, he has
+not had the pen of a Cicero. Let those who rebuke the unmanliness of
+Cicero's wailings remember what were his sufferings. The story has yet
+to be told, but I may in rough words describe their nature. Everything
+was to be taken from him: all that he had--his houses, his books, his
+pleasant gardens, his busts and pictures, his wide retinue of slaves,
+and possessions lordly as are those of our dukes and earls. He was
+driven out from Italy and so driven that no place of delight could be
+open to him. Sicily, where he had friends, Athens, where he might have
+lived, were closed against him. He had to look where to live, and did
+live for a while on money borrowed from his friends. All the cherished
+occupations of his life were over for him--the law courts, the Forum,
+the Senate, and the crowded meetings of Roman citizens hanging on his
+words. The circumstances of his exile separated him from his wife and
+children, so that he was alone. All this was assured to him for life, as
+far as Roman law could assure it. Let us think of the condition of some
+great and serviceable Englishman in similar circumstances. Let us
+suppose that Sir Robert Peel had been impeached, and forced by some
+iniquitous sentence to live beyond the pale of civilization: that the
+houses at Whitehall Gardens and at Drayton had been confiscated,
+dismantled, and levelled to the ground, and his rents and revenues made
+over to his enemies; that everything should have been done to destroy
+him by the country he had served, except the act of taking away that
+life which would thus have been made a burden to him. Would not his case
+have been more piteous, a source of more righteous indignation, than
+that even of the Mores or Raleighs? He suffered under invectives in the
+House of Commons, and we sympathized with him; but if some Clodius of
+the day could have done this to him, should we have thought the worse of
+him had he opened his wounds to his wife, or to his brother, or to his
+friend of friends?
+
+Had Cicero put an end to his life in his exile, as he thought of doing,
+he would have been a second Cato to admiring posterity, and some Lucan
+with rolling verses would have told us narratives of his valor. The
+judges of to-day look back to his half-formed purposes in this direction
+as being an added evidence of the weakness of the man; but had he let
+himself blood and have perished in his bath, he would have been thought
+to have escaped from life as honorably as did Junius Brutus It is
+because he dared to live on that we are taught to think so little of
+him,--because he had antedated Christianity so far as to feel when the
+moment came that such an escape was, in truth, unmanly. He doubted, and
+when the deed had not been done he expressed regret that he had allowed
+himself to live. But he did not do it,--as Cato would have done, or
+Brutus.
+
+It may be as well here to combat, in as few words as possible, the
+assertions which have been made that Cicero, having begun life as a
+democrat, discarded his colors as soon as he had received from the
+people those honors for which he had sought popularity. They who have
+said so have taken their idea from the fact that, in much of his early
+forensic work, he spoke against the aristocratic party. He attacked
+Sulla, through his favorite Chrysogonus, in his defence of Roscius
+Amerinus. He afterward defended a woman of Arretium in the spirit of
+antagonism to Sulla. His accusation of Verres was made on the same side
+in politics, and was carried on in opposition to Hortensius and the
+oligarchs. He defended the Tribune Caius Cornelius. Then, when he became
+Consul, he devoted himself to the destruction of Catiline, who was
+joined with many, perhaps with Cęsar's sympathy, in the conspiracy for
+the overthrow of the Republic. Cęsar soon became the leader of the
+democracy,--became rather what Mommsen describes as "Democracy" itself;
+and as Cicero had defended the Senate from Catiline, and had refused to
+attach himself to Cęsar, he is supposed to have turned from the
+political ideas of his youth, and to have become a Conservative when
+Conservative ideas suited his ambition.
+
+I will not accept the excuse put forward on his behalf, that the early
+speeches were made on the side of democracy because the exigencies of
+the occasion required him to so devote his energies as an advocate. No
+doubt he was an advocate, as are our barristers of to-day, and, as an
+advocate, supported this side or that; but we shall be wrong if we
+suppose that the Roman "patronus" supplied his services under such
+inducements. With us a man goes into the profession of the law with the
+intention of making money, and takes the cases right and left, unless
+there be special circumstances which may debar him from doing so with
+honor. It is a point of etiquette with him to give his assistance, in
+turn, as he may be called on; so much so, that leading men are not
+unfrequently employed on one side simply that they may not be employed
+on the other side. It should not be urged on the part of Cicero that, so
+actuated, he defended Amerinus, a case in which he took part against the
+aristocrats, or defended Publius Sulla, in doing which he appeared on
+the side of the aristocracy. Such a defence of his conduct would be
+misleading, and might be confuted. It would be confuted by those who
+suppose him to have been "notoriously a political trimmer," as Mommsen
+has[270] called him; or a "deserter," as he was described by Dio Cassius
+and by the Pseudo-Sallust,[271] by showing that in fact he took up
+causes under the influence of strong personal motives such as rarely
+govern an English barrister. These motives were in many cases partly
+political; but they operated in such a manner as to give no guide to his
+political views. In defending Sulla's nephew he was moved, as far as we
+know, solely by private motives. In defending Amerinus he may be said to
+have attacked Sulla. His object was to stamp out the still burning
+embers of Sulla's cruelty; but not the less was he wedded to Sulla's
+general views as to the restoration of the authority of the Senate. In
+his early speeches, especially in that spoken against Verres, he
+denounces the corruption of the senatorial judges; but at that very
+period of his life he again and again expresses his own belief in the
+glory and majesty of the Senate. In accusing Verres he accused the
+general corruption of Rome's provincial governors; and as they were
+always past-Consuls or past-Prętors, and had been the elite of the
+aristocracy, he may be said so far to have taken the part of a democrat;
+but he had done so only so far as he had found himself bound by a sense
+of duty to put a stop to corruption. The venality of the judges and the
+rapacity of governors had been fit objects for his eloquence; but I deny
+that he can be fairly charged with having tampered with democracy
+because he had thus used his eloquence on behalf of the people.
+
+He was no doubt stirred by other political motives less praiseworthy,
+though submitted to in accordance with the practice and the known usages
+of Rome. He had undertaken to speak for Catiline when Catiline was
+accused of corruption on his return from Africa, knowing that Catiline
+had been guilty. He did not do so; but the intention, for our present
+purpose, is the same as the doing. To have defended Catiline would have
+assisted him in his operations as a candidate for the Consulship.
+Catiline was a bad subject for a defence--as was Fonteius, whom he
+certainly did defend--and Catiline was a democrat. But Cicero, had he
+defended Catiline, would not have done so as holding out his hand to
+democracy. Cicero, when, in the Pro Lege Manilia, he for the first time
+addressed the people, certainly spoke in opposition to the wishes of the
+Senate in proposing that Pompey should have the command of the
+Mithridatic war; but his views were not democratic. It has been said
+that this was done because Pompey could help him to the Consulship. To
+me it seems that he had already declared to himself that among leading
+men in Rome Pompey was the one to whom the Republic would look with the
+most security as a bulwark, and that on that account he had resolved to
+bind himself to Pompey in some political marriage. Be that as it may,
+there was no tampering with democracy in the speech Pro Lege Manilia. Of
+all the extant orations made by him before his Consulship, the attentive
+reader will sympathize the least with that of Fonteius. After his
+scathing onslaught on Verres for provincial plunder, he defended the
+plunderer of the Gauls, and held up the suffering allies of Rome to
+ridicule as being hardly entitled to good government. This he did simply
+as an advocate, without political motive of any kind--in the days in
+which he was supposed to be currying favor with democracy--governed by
+private friendship, looking forward, probably, to some friendly office
+in return, as was customary. It was thus that afterward he defended
+Antony, his colleague in the Consulship, whom he knew to have been a
+corrupt governor. Autronius had been a party to Catiline's conspiracy,
+and Autronius had been Cicero's school-fellow; but Cicero, for some
+reserved reason with which we are not acquainted, refused to plead for
+Autronius. There is, I maintain, no ground for suggesting that Cicero
+had shown by his speeches before his Consulship any party adherence. The
+declaration which he made after his Consulship, in the speech for Sulla,
+that up to the time of Catiline's first conspiracy forensic duties had
+not allowed him to devote himself to party politics, is entitled to
+belief: we know, indeed, that it was so. As Quęstor, as Ędile, and as
+Prętor, he did not interfere in the political questions of Rome, except
+in demanding justice from judges and purity from governors. When he
+became Consul then he became a politician, and after that there was
+certainly no vacillation in his views. Critics say that he surrendered
+himself to Cęsar when Cęsar became master. We shall come to that
+hereafter; but the accusation with which I am dealing now is that which
+charges him with having abandoned the democratic memories of his youth
+as soon as he had enveloped himself with the consular purple. There had
+been no democratic promises, and there was no change when he became
+Consul.
+
+In truth, Cicero's political convictions were the same from the
+beginning to the end of his career, with a consistency which is by no
+means usual in politicians; for though, before his Consulship, he had
+not taken up politics as a business he had entertained certain political
+views, as do all men who live in public. From the first to the last we
+may best describe him by the word we have now in use, as a conservative.
+The government of Rome had been an oligarchy for many years, though much
+had been done by the citizens to reduce the thraldom which an oligarchy
+is sure to exact. To that oligarchy Cicero was bound by all the
+convictions, by all the practices, and by all the prejudices of his
+life. When he speaks of a Republic he speaks of a people and of an
+Empire governed by an oligarchy; he speaks of a power to be kept in the
+hands of a few--for the benefit of the few, and of the many if it might
+be--but at any rate in the hands of a few. That those few should be so
+select as to admit of no new-comers among them, would probably have been
+a portion of his political creed, had he not been himself a "novus
+homo." As he was the first of his family to storm the barrier of the
+fortress, he had been forced to depend much on popular opinion; but not
+on that account had there been any dealings between him and democracy.
+That the Empire should be governed according to the old oligarchical
+forms which had been in use for more than four centuries, and had
+created the power of Rome--that was his political creed. That Consuls,
+Censors, and Senators might go on to the end of time with no diminution
+of their dignity, but with great increase of justice and honor and truth
+among them--that was his political aspiration. They had made Rome what
+it was, and he knew and could imagine nothing better; and, odious as an
+oligarchy is seen to be under the strong light of experience to which
+prolonged ages has subjected it, the aspiration on his part was noble.
+He has been wrongly accused of deserting "that democracy with which he
+had flirted in his youth." There had been no democracy in his youth,
+though there had existed such a condition in the time of the Gracchi.
+There was none in his youth and none in his age. That which has been
+wrongly called democracy was conspiracy--not a conspiracy of democrats
+such as led to our Commonwealth, or to the American Independence, or to
+the French Revolution; but conspiracy of a few nobles for the better
+assurance of the plunder, and the power, and the high places of the
+Empire. Of any tendency toward democracy no man has been less justly
+accused than Cicero, unless it might be Cęsar. To Cęsar we must accord
+the merit of having seen that a continuation of the old oligarchical
+forms was impracticable This Cicero did not see. He thought that the
+wounds inflicted by the degeneracy and profligacy of individuals were
+curable. It is attributed to Cęsar that he conceived the grand idea of
+establishing general liberty under the sole dominion of one great, and
+therefore beneficent, ruler. I think he saw no farther than that he, by
+strategy, management, and courage might become this ruler, whether
+beneficent or the reverse. But here I think that it becomes the writer,
+whether he be historian, biographer, or fill whatever meaner position he
+may in literature, to declare that no beneficence can accompany such a
+form of government. For all temporary sleekness, for metropolitan
+comfort and fatness, the bill has to be paid sooner or later in
+ignorance, poverty, and oppression. With an oligarchy there will be
+other, perhaps graver, faults; but with an oligarchy there will be salt,
+though it be among a few. There will be a Cicero now and again--or at
+least a Cato. From the dead, stagnant level of personal despotism there
+can be no rising to life till corruption paralyzes the hands of power,
+and the fabric falls by its own decay Of this no proof can be found in
+the world's history so manifest as that taught by the Roman Empire.
+
+I think it is made clear by a study of Cicero's life and works, up to
+the period of his exile, that an adhesion to the old forms of the Roman
+Government was his guiding principle. I am sure that they who follow me
+to the close of his career will acknowledge that after his exile he
+lived for this principle, and that he died for it. "Respublica," the
+Republic, was the one word which to his ear contained a political charm.
+It was the shibboleth by which men were to be conjured into well-being.
+The word constitution is nearly as potent with us. But it is essential
+that the reader of Roman history and Roman biography should understand
+that the appellation had in it, for all Roman ears, a thoroughly
+conservative meaning. Among those who at Cicero's period dealt with
+politics in Rome--all of whom, no doubt, spoke of the Republic as the
+vessel of State which was to be defended by all persons--there were four
+classes. These were they who simply desired the plunder of the
+State--the Catilines, the Sullas of the day, and the Antonys; men such
+as Verres had been, and Fonteius, and Autronius. The other three can be
+best typified each by one man. There was Cęsar, who knew that the
+Republic was gone, past all hope. There was Cato--"the dogmatical fool
+Cato" as Mommsen calls him, perhaps with some lack of the historian's
+dignity--who was true to the Republic, who could not bend an inch, and
+was thus as detrimental to any hope of reconstruction as a Catiline or a
+Cęsar. Cicero was of the fourth class, believing in the Republic, intent
+on saving it, imbued amid all his doubts with a conviction that if the
+"optimates" or "boni"--the leading men of the party--would be true to
+themselves, Consuls, Censors, and Senate would still suffice to rule the
+world; but prepared to give and take with those who were opposed to him.
+It was his idea that political integrity should keep its own hands
+clean, but should wink at much dirt in the world at large. Nothing, he
+saw, could be done by Catonic rigor. We can see now that Ciceronic
+compromises were, and must have been, equally ineffective. The patient
+was past cure. But in seeking the truth as to Cicero, we have to
+perceive that amid all his doubts, frequently in despondency, sometimes
+overwhelmed by the misery and hopelessness of his condition, he did hold
+fast by this idea to the end. The frequent expressions made to Atticus
+in opposition to this belief are to be taken as the murmurs of his mind
+at the moment; as you shall hear a man swear that all is gone, and see
+him tear his hair, and shall yet know that there is a deep fund of hope
+within his bosom. It was the ingratitude of his political friends, his
+"boni" and his "optimates," of Pompey as their head, which tried him the
+sorest; but he was always forgiving them, forgiving Pompey as the head
+of them, because he knew that, were he to be severed from them, then the
+political world must be closed to him altogether.
+
+Of Cicero's strength or Cicero's weakness Pompey seems to have known
+nothing. He was no judge of men. Cęsar measured him with a great
+approach to accuracy. Cęsar knew him to be the best Roman of his day;
+one who, if he could be brought over to serve in Cęsarean ranks, would
+be invaluable--because of his honesty, his eloquence, and his
+capability; but he knew him as one who must be silenced if he were not
+brought to serve on the Cęsarean side. Such a man, however, might be
+silenced for a while--taught to perceive that his efforts were vain--and
+then brought into favor by further overtures, and made of use.
+Personally he was pleasant to Cęsar, who had taste enough to know that
+he was a man worthy of all personal dignity. But Cęsar was not, I think,
+quite accurate in his estimation, having allowed himself to believe at
+the last that Cicero's energy on behalf of the Republic had been
+quelled.
+
+[Sidenote: B.C. 58, ętat. 49.]
+
+Now we will go back to the story of Cicero's exile. Gradually during the
+preceding year he had learned that Clodius was preparing to attack him,
+and to doubt whether he could expect protection from the Triumvirate.
+That he could be made safe by the justice either of the people or by
+that of any court before which he could be tried, seems never to have
+occurred to him. He knew the people and he knew the courts too well.
+Pompey no doubt might have warded off the coming evil; such at least was
+Cicero's idea. To him Pompey was the greatest political power as yet
+extant in Rome; but he was beginning to believe that Pompey would be
+untrue to him. When he had sent to Pompey a long account of the grand
+doings of his Consulship, Pompey had replied with faintest praises. He
+had rejected the overtures of the Triumvirate. In the last letter to
+Atticus in the year before, written in August,[272] he had declared that
+the Republic was ruined; that they who had brought things to this
+pass--meaning the Triumvirate--were hostile; but, for himself, he was
+confident in saying that he was quite safe in the good will of men
+around him. There is a letter to his brother written in November, the
+next letter in the collection, in which he says that Pompey and Cęsar
+promise him everything. With the exception of two letters of
+introduction, we have nothing from him till he writes to Atticus from
+the first scene of his exile.
+
+When the new year commenced, Clodius was Tribune of the people, and
+immediately was active. Piso and Gabinius were Consuls. Piso was kinsman
+to Piso Frugi, who had married Cicero's daughter,[273]and was expected
+to befriend Cicero at this crisis. But Clodius procured the allotment of
+Syria and Macedonia to the two Consuls by the popular vote. They were
+provinces rich in plunder; and it was matter of importance for a Consul
+to know that the prey which should come to him as Proconsul should be
+worthy of his grasp. They were, therefore, ready to support the Tribune
+in what he proposed to do. It was necessary to Cicero's enemies that
+there should be some law by which Cicero might be condemned. It would
+not be within the power of Clodius, even with the Triumvirate at his
+back, to drive the man out of Rome and out of Italy, without an alleged
+cause. Though justice had been tabooed, law was still in vogue. Now
+there was a matter as to which Cicero was open to attack. As Consul he
+had caused certain Roman citizens to be executed as conspirators, in the
+teeth of a law which enacted that no Roman citizen should be condemned
+to die except by a direct vote of the people. It had certainly become a
+maxim of the constitution of the Republic that a citizen should not be
+made to suffer death except by the voice of the people. The Valerian,
+the Porcian, and the Sempronian laws had all been passed to that effect.
+Now there had been no popular vote as to the execution of Lentulus and
+the other conspirators, who had been taken red-handed in Rome in the
+affair of Catiline. Their death had been decreed by the Senate, and the
+decree of the Senate had been carried out by Cicero; but no decree of
+the Senate had the power of a law. In spite of that decree the old law
+was in force; and no appeal to the people had been allowed to Lentulus.
+But there had grown up in the constitution a practice which had been
+supposed to override the Valerian and Porcian laws. In certain
+emergencies the Senate would call upon the Consuls to see that the
+Republic should suffer no injury, and it had been held that at such
+moments the Consuls were invested with an authority above all law.
+Cicero had been thus strengthened when, as Consul, he had struggled with
+Catiline; but it was an open question, as Cicero himself very well knew.
+In the year of his Consulship--the very year in which Lentulus and the
+others had been strangled--he had defended Rabirius, who was then
+accused of having killed a citizen thirty years before. Rabirius was
+charged with having slaughtered the Tribune Saturninus by consular
+authority, the Consuls of the day having been ordered to defend the
+Republic, as Cicero had been ordered. Rabirius probably had not killed
+Saturninus, nor did any one now care whether he had done so or not. The
+trial had been brought about notoriously by the agency of Cęsar, who
+caused himself to be selected by the Prętor as one of the two judges for
+the occasion;[274] and Cęsar's object as notoriously was to lessen the
+authority of the Senate, and to support the democratic interest. Both
+Cicero and Hortensius defended Rabirius, but he was condemned by Cęsar,
+and, as we are told, himself only escaped by using that appeal to the
+people in support of which he had himself been brought to trial. In
+this, as in so many of the forensic actions of the day, there had been
+an admixture of violence and law. We must, I think, acknowledge that
+there was the same leaven of illegality in the proceedings against
+Lentulus. It had no doubt been the intention of the constitution that a
+Consul, in the heat of an emergency, should use his personal authority
+for the protection of the Commonwealth, but it cannot be alleged that
+there was such an emergency, when the full Senate had had time to debate
+on the fate of the Catiline criminals. Both from Cęsar's words as
+reported by Sallust, and from Cicero's as given to us by himself, we are
+aware that an idea of the illegality of the proceeding was present in
+the minds of Senators at the moment. But, though law was loved at Rome,
+all forensic and legislative proceedings were at this time carried on
+with monstrous illegality. Consuls consulted the heavens falsely;
+Tribunes used their veto violently; judges accepted bribes openly; the
+votes of the people were manipulated fraudulently. In the trial and
+escape of Rabirius, the laws were despised by those who pretended to
+vindicate them. Clodius had now become a Tribune by the means of certain
+legal provision, but yet in opposition to all law. In the conduct of the
+affair against Catiline Cicero seems to have been actuated by pure
+patriotism, and to have been supported by a fine courage; but he knew
+that in destroying Lentulus and Cethegus he subjected himself to certain
+dangers. He had willingly faced these dangers for the sake of the object
+in view. As long as he might remain the darling of the people, as he was
+at that moment, he would no doubt be safe; but it was not given to any
+one to be for long the darling of the Roman people. Cicero had become so
+by using an eloquence to which the Romans were peculiarly susceptible;
+but though they loved sweet tongues, long purses went farther with them.
+Since Cicero's Consulship he had done nothing to offend the people,
+except to remain occasionally out of their sight; but he had lost the
+brilliancy of his popularity, and he was aware that it was so.
+
+In discussing popularity in Rome we have to remember of what elements it
+was formed. We hear that this or that man was potent at some special
+time by the assistance coming to him from the popular voice. There was
+in Rome a vast population of idle men, who had been trained by their
+city life to look to the fact of their citizenship for their support,
+and who did, in truth, live on their citizenship. Of "panem et
+circenses" we have all heard, and know that eleemosynary bread and the
+public amusements of the day supplied the material and ęsthetic wants of
+many Romans. But men so fed and so amused were sure to need further
+occupations. They became attached to certain friends, to certain
+patrons, and to certain parties, and soon learned that a return was
+expected for the food and for the excitement supplied to them. This they
+gave by holding themselves in readiness for whatever violence was needed
+from them, till it became notorious in Rome that a great party man might
+best attain his political object by fighting for it in the streets. This
+was the meaning of that saying of Crassus, that a man could not be
+considered rich till he could keep an army in his own pay. A popular
+vote obtained and declared by a faction fight in the forum was still a
+popular vote, and if supported by sufficient violence would be valid.
+There had been street fighting of the kind when Cicero had defended
+Caius Cornelius, in the year after his Prętorship; there had been
+fighting of the kind when Rabirius had been condemned in his Consulship.
+We shall learn by-and-by to what extent such fighting prevailed when
+Clodius was killed by Milo's body-guard. At the period of which we are
+now writing, when Clodius was intent on pursuing Cicero to his ruin, it
+was a question with Cicero himself whether he would not trust to a
+certain faction in Rome to fight for him, and so to protect him. Though
+his popularity was on the wane--that general popularity which, we may
+presume, had been produced by the tone of his voice and the grace of his
+language--there still remained to him that other popularity which
+consisted, in truth, of the trained bands employed by the "boni" and the
+"optimates," and which might be used, if need were, in opposition to
+trained bands on the other side.
+
+The bill first proposed by Clodius to the people with the object of
+destroying Cicero did not mention Cicero, nor, in truth, refer to him.
+It purported to enact that he who had caused to be executed any Roman
+citizen not duly condemned to death, should himself be deprived of the
+privilege of water or fire.[275] This condemned no suggested malefactor
+to death; but, in accordance with Roman law, made it impossible that any
+Roman so condemned should live within whatever bounds might be named for
+this withholding of fire and water. The penalty intended was banishment;
+but by this enactment no individual would be banished. Cicero, however,
+at once took the suggestion to himself, and put himself into mourning,
+as a man accused and about to be brought to his trial. He went about the
+streets accompanied by crowds armed for his protection; and Clodius also
+caused himself to be so accompanied. There came thus to be a question
+which might prevail should there be a general fight. The Senate was, as
+a body, on Cicero's side, but was quite unable to cope with the
+Triumvirate. Cęsar no doubt had resolved that Cicero should be made to
+go, and Cęsar was lord of the Triumvirate. On behalf of Cicero there was
+a large body of the conservative or oligarchical party who were still
+true to him; and they, too, all went into the usual public mourning,
+evincing their desire that the accused man should be rescued from his
+accusers.
+
+The bitterness of Clodius would be surprising did we not know how bitter
+had been Cicero's tongue. When the affair of the Bona Dea had taken
+place there was no special enmity between this debauched young man and
+the great Consul. Cicero, though his own life had ever been clean and
+well ordered, rather affected the company of fast young men when he
+found them to be witty as well as clever. This very Clodius had been in
+his good books till the affair of the Bona Dea. But now the Tribune's
+hatred was internecine. I have hitherto said nothing, and need say but
+little, of a certain disreputable lady named Clodia. She was the sister
+of Clodius and the wife of Metellus Celer. She was accused by public
+voice in Rome of living in incest with her brother, and of poisoning her
+husband. Cicero calls her afterward, in his defence of Cęlius, "amica
+omnium." She had the nickname of Quadrantaria[276] given to her, because
+she frequented the public baths, at which the charge was a farthing. It
+must be said also of her, either in praise or in dispraise, that she was
+the Lesbia who inspired the muse of Catullus. It was rumored in Rome
+that she had endeavored to set her cap at Cicero. Cicero in his raillery
+had not spared the lady. To speak publicly the grossest evil of women
+was not opposed to any idea of gallantry current among the Romans. Our
+sense of chivalry, as well as decency, is disgusted by the language used
+by Horace to women who once to him were young and pretty, but have
+become old and ugly. The venom of Cicero's abuse of Clodia annoys us,
+and we have to remember that the gentle ideas which we have taken in
+with our mother's milk had not grown into use with the Romans. It is
+necessary that this woman's name should be mentioned, and it may appear
+here as she was one of the causes of that hatred which burnt between
+Clodius and Cicero, till Clodius was killed in a street row.
+
+It has been presumed that Cicero was badly advised in presuming publicly
+that the new law was intended against himself, and in taking upon
+himself the outward signs of a man under affliction. "The resolution,"
+says Middleton, "of changing his gown was too hasty and inconsiderate,
+and helped to precipitate his ruin." He was sensible of his error when
+too late, and oft reproaches Atticus that, being a stander-by, and less
+heated with the game than himself, he would suffer him to make such
+blunders. And he quotes the words written to Atticus: "Here my judgment
+first failed me, or, indeed, brought me into trouble. We were blind,
+blind I say, in changing our raiment and in appealing to the
+populace. * * * I handed myself and all belonging to me over to my enemies,
+while you were looking on, while you were holding your peace; yes, you,
+who, if your wit in the matter was no better than mine, were impeded by
+no personal fears."[277] But the reader should study the entire letter,
+and study it in the original, for no translator can give its true
+purport. This the reader must do before he can understand Cicero's state
+of mind when writing it, or his relation to Atticus; or the thoughts
+which distracted him when, in accordance with the advice of Atticus, he
+resolved, while yet uncondemned, to retire into banishment. The censure
+to which Atticus is subjected throughout this letter is that which a
+thoughtful, hesitating, scrupulous man is so often disposed to address
+to himself. After reminding Atticus of the sort of advice which should
+have been given--the want of which in the first moment of his exile he
+regrets--and doing this in words of which it is very difficult now to
+catch the exact flavor, he begs to be pardoned for his reproaches. "You
+will forgive me this," he says. "I blame myself more than I do you; but
+I look to you as a second self, and I make you a sharer with me of my
+own folly." I take this letter out of its course, and speak of it as
+connected with that terrible period of doubt to which it refers, in
+which he had to decide whether he would remain in Rome and fight it out,
+or run before his enemies. But in writing the letter afterward his mind
+was as much disturbed as when he did fly. I am inclined, therefore, to
+think that Middleton and others may have been wrong in blaming his
+flight, which they have done, because in his subsequent vacillating
+moods he blamed himself. How the battle might have gone had he remained,
+we have no evidence to show; but we do know that though he fled, he
+returned soon with renewed glory, and altogether overcame the attempt
+which had been made to destroy him.
+
+In this time of his distress a strong effort was made by the Senate to
+rescue him. It was proposed to them that they all as a body should go
+into mourning on his behalf; indeed, the Senate passed a vote to this
+effect, but were prevented by the two Consuls from carrying it out. As
+to what he had best do he and his friends were divided. Some recommended
+that he should remain where he was, and defend himself by
+street-fighting should it be necessary. In doing this he would
+acknowledge that law no longer prevailed in Rome--a condition of things
+to which many had given in their adherence, but with which Cicero would
+surely have been the last to comply. He himself, in his despair, thought
+for a time that the old Roman mode of escape would be preferable, and
+that he might with decorum end his life and his troubles by suicide.
+Atticus and others dissuaded him from this, and recommended him to fly.
+Among these Cato and Hortensius have both been named. To this advice he
+at last yielded, and it may be doubted whether any better could have
+been given. Lawlessness, which had been rampant in Rome before, had,
+under the Triumvirate, become almost lawful. It was Cęsar's intention to
+carry out his will with such compliance with the forms of the Republic
+as might suit him, but in utter disregard to all such forms when they
+did not suit him. The banishment of Cicero was one of the last steps
+taken by Cęsar before he left Rome for his campaigns in Gaul. He was
+already in command of the legions, and was just without the city. He had
+endeavored to buy Cicero, but had failed. Having failed, he had
+determined to be rid of him. Clodius was but his tool, as were Pompey
+and the two Consuls. Had Cicero endeavored to support himself by
+violence in Rome, his contest would, in fact have been with Cęsar.
+
+Cicero, before he went, applied for protection personally to Piso the
+Consul, and to Pompey. Gabinius, the other Consul, had already declared
+his purpose to the Senate, but Piso was bound to him by family ties. He
+himself relates to us in his oration, spoken after his return, against
+this Piso, the manner of the meeting between him and Rome's chief
+officer. Piso told him--so at least Cicero declared in the Senate, and
+we have heard of no contradiction--that Gabinius was so driven by debts
+as to be unable to hold up his head without a rich province; that he
+himself, Piso, could only hope to get a province by taking part with
+Gabinius; that any application to the Consuls was useless, and that
+every one must look after himself.[278] Concerning his appeal to Pompey
+two stories have been given to us, neither of which appears to be true.
+Plutarch says that when Cicero had travelled out from Rome to Pompey's
+Alban villa, Pompey ran out of the back-door to avoid meeting him.
+Plutarch cared more for a good story than for accuracy, and is not
+worthy of much credit as to details unless when corroborated. The other
+account is based on Cicero's assertion that he did see Pompey on this
+occasion. Nine or ten years after the meeting he refers to it in a
+letter to Atticus, which leaves no doubt as to the fact. The story
+founded on that letter declares that Cicero threw himself bodily at his
+old friend's feet, and that Pompey did not lend a hand to raise him, but
+told him simply that everything was in Cęsar's hands. This narrative is,
+I think, due to a misinterpretation of Cicero's words, though it is
+given by a close translation of them. He is describing Pompey when Cęsar
+after his Gallic wars had crossed the Rubicon, and the two late
+Triumvirates--the third having perished miserably in the East--were in
+arms against each other. "Alter ardet furore et scelere" he says.[279]
+Cęsar is pressing on unscrupulous in his passion. "Alter is qui nos sibi
+quondam ad pedes stratos ne sublevabat quidem, qui se nihil contra hujus
+voluntatem aiebat facere posse." "That other one," he continues--meaning
+Pompey, and pursuing his picture of the present contrast--"who in days
+gone by would not even lift me when I lay at his feet, and told me that
+he could do nothing but as Cęsar wished it." This little supposed detail
+of biography has been given, no doubt, from an accurate reading of the
+words; but in it the spirit of the writer's mind as he wrote it has
+surely been missed. The prostration of which he spoke, from which Pompey
+would not raise him, the memory of which was still so bitter to him, was
+not a prostration of the body. I hold it to have been impossible that
+Cicero should have assumed such an attitude before Pompey, or that he
+would so have written to Atticus had he done so. It would have been
+neither Roman nor Ciceronian, as displayed by Cicero to Pompey. He had
+gone to his old ally and told him of his trouble, and had no doubt
+reminded him of those promises of assistance which Pompey had so often
+made. Then Pompey had refused to help him, and had assured him, with too
+much truth, that Cęsar's will was everything. Again, we have to remember
+that in judging of the meaning of words between two such correspondents
+as Cicero and Atticus, we must read between the lines, and interpret the
+words by creating for ourselves something of the spirit in which they
+were written and in which they were received. I cannot imagine that, in
+describing to Atticus what had occurred at that interview nine years
+after it had taken place, Cicero had intended it to be understood that
+he had really grovelled in the dust.
+
+Toward the end of March he started from Rome, intending to take refuge
+among his friends in Sicily. On the same day Clodius brought in a bill
+directed against Cicero by name and caused it to be carried by the
+people, "Ut Marco Tullio aqua et igni interdictum sit"--that it should
+be illegal to supply Cicero with fire and water. The law when passed
+forbade any one to harbor the criminal within four hundred miles of
+Rome, and declared the doing so to be a capital offence. It is evident,
+from the action of those who obeyed the law, and of those who did not,
+that legal results were not feared so much as the ill-will of those who
+had driven Cicero to his exile. They who refused him succor did do so
+not because to give it him would be illegal, but lest Cęsar and Pompey
+would be offended. It did not last long, and during the short period of
+his exile he found perhaps more of friendship than of enmity; but he
+directed his steps in accordance with the bearing of party-spirit. We
+are told that he was afraid to go to Athens, because at Athens lived
+that Autronius whom he had refused to defend. Autronius had been
+convicted of conspiracy and banished, and, having been a Catilinarian
+conspirator, had been in truth on Cęsar's side. Nor were geographical
+facts sufficiently established to tell Cicero what places were and what
+were not without the forbidden circle. He sojourned first at Vibo, in
+the extreme south of Italy, intending to pass from thence into Sicily.
+It was there that he learned that a certain distance had been
+prescribed; but it seems that he had already heard that the Proconsular
+Governor of the island would not receive him, fearing Cęsar. Then he
+came north from Vibo to Brundisium, that being the port by which
+travellers generally went from Italy to the East. He had determined to
+leave his family in Rome, feeling, probably, that it would be easier for
+him to find a temporary home for himself than for him and them together.
+And there were money difficulties in which Atticus helped him.[280]
+Atticus, always wealthy, had now become a very rich man by the death of
+an uncle. We do not know of what nature were the money arrangements made
+by Cicero at the time, but there can be no doubt that the losses by his
+exile were very great. There was a thorough disruption of his property,
+for which the subsequent generosity of his country was unable altogether
+to atone. But this sat lightly on Cicero's heart. Pecuniary losses never
+weighed heavily with him.
+
+As he journeyed back from Vibo to Brundisium friends were very kind to
+him, in spite of the law. Toward the end of the speech which he made
+five years afterward on behalf of his friend C. Plancius he explains the
+debt of gratitude which he owed to his client, whose kindness to him in
+his exile had been very great. He commences his story of the goodness of
+Plancius by describing the generosity of the towns on the road to
+Brundisium, and the hospitality of his friend Flavius, who had received
+him at his house in the neighborhood of that town, and had placed him
+safely on board a ship when at last he resolved to cross over to
+Dyrrachium. There were many schemes running in his head at this time. At
+one period he had resolved to pass through Macedonia into Asia, and to
+remain for a while at Cyzicum. This idea he expresses in a letter to his
+wife written from Brundisium. Then he goes, wailing no doubt, but in
+words which to me seem very natural as coming from a husband in such a
+condition: "O me perditum, O me afflictum;"[281] exclamations which it
+is impossible to translate, as they refer to his wife's separation from
+himself rather than to his own personal sufferings. "How am I to ask you
+to come to me?" he says; "you a woman, ill in health, worn out in body
+and in spirit. I cannot ask you! Must I then live without you? It must
+be so, I think. If there be any hope of my return, it is you must look
+to it, you that must strengthen it; but if, as I fear, the thing is
+done, then come to me. If I can have you I shall not be altogether
+destroyed." No doubt these are wailings; but is a man unmanly because he
+so wails to the wife of his bosom? Other humans have written prettily
+about women: it was common for Romans to do so. Catullus desires from
+Lesbia as many kisses as are the stars of night or the sands of Libya.
+Horace swears that he would perish for Chloe if Chloe might be left
+alive. "When I am dying," says Tibullus to Delia, "may I be gazing at
+you; may my last grasp hold your hand." Propertius tells Cynthia that
+she stands to him in lieu of home and parents, and all the joys of life.
+"Whether he be sad with his friends or happy, Cynthia does it all." The
+language in each case is perfect; but what other Roman was there of whom
+we have evidence that he spoke to his wife like this? Ovid in his
+letters from his banishment says much of his love for his wife; but
+there is no passion expressed in anything that Ovid wrote.
+
+Clodius, as soon as the enactment against Cicero became law, caused it
+be carried into effect with all its possible cruelties. The criminal's
+property was confiscated. The house on the Palatine Hill was destroyed,
+and the goods were put up to auction, with, as we are told, a great lack
+of buyers. His choicest treasures were carried away by the Consuls
+themselves. Piso, who had lived near him in Rome, got for himself and
+for his father-in-law the rich booty from the town house. The country
+villas were also destroyed, and Gabinius, who had a country house close
+by Cicero's Tusculan retreat, took even the very shrubs out of the
+garden. He tells the story of the greed and enmity of the Consuls in the
+speech he made after his return, Pro Domo Sua,[282] pleading for the
+restitution of his household property. "My house on the Palatine was
+burnt," he says, "not by any accident, but by arson. In the mean time
+the Consuls were feasting, and were congratulating themselves among the
+conspirators, when one boasted that he had been Catiline's friend, the
+other that Cethegus had been his cousin." By this he implies that the
+conspiracy which during his Consulship had been so odious to Rome was
+now, in these days of the Triumvirate, again in favor among Roman
+aristocrats.
+
+He went across from Brundisium to Dyrrachium, and from thence to
+Thessalonica, where he was treated with most loving-kindness by
+Plancius, who was Quęstor in these parts, and who came down to
+Dyrrachium to meet him, clad in mourning for the occasion. This was the
+Plancius whom he afterward defended, and indeed he was bound to do so.
+Plancius seems to have had but little dread of the law, though he was a
+Roman officer employed in the very province to the government of which
+the present Consul Piso had already been appointed. Thessalonica was
+within four hundred miles, and yet Cicero lived there with Plancius for
+some months.
+
+The letters from Cicero during his exile are to me very touching, though
+I have been told so often that in having written them he lacked the
+fortitude of a Roman. Perhaps I am more capable of appreciating natural
+humanity than Roman fortitude. We remember the story of the Spartan boy
+who allowed the fox to bite him beneath his frock without crying. I
+think we may imagine that he refrained from tears in public, before some
+herd of school-fellows, or a bench of masters, or amid the sternness of
+parental authority; but that he told his sister afterward how he had
+been tortured, or his mother as he lay against her bosom, or perhaps his
+chosen chum. Such reticences are made dignified by the occasion, when
+something has to be won by controlling the expression to which nature
+uncontrolled would give utterance, but are not in themselves evidence
+either of sagacity or of courage. Roman fortitude was but a suit of
+armor to be worn on state occasions. If we come across a warrior with
+his crested helmet and his sword and his spear, we see, no doubt, an
+impressive object. If we could find him in his night-shirt, the same man
+would be there, but those who do not look deeply into things would be
+apt to despise him because his grand trappings were absent. Chance has
+given us Cicero in his night-shirt. The linen is of such fine texture
+that we are delighted with it, but we despise the man because he wore a
+garment--such as we wear ourselves indeed, though when we wear it nobody
+is then brought in to look at us.
+
+There is one most touching letter written from Thessalonica to his
+brother, by whom, after thoughts vacillating this way and that, he was
+unwilling to be visited, thinking that a meeting would bring more of
+pain than of service. "Mi frater, mi frater, mi frater!" he begins. The
+words in English would hardly give all the pathos. "Did you think that I
+did not write because I am angry, or that I did not wish to see you? I
+angry with you! But I could not endure to be seen by you. You would not
+have seen your brother; not him whom you had left; not him whom you had
+known; not him whom, weeping as you went away, you had dismissed,
+weeping himself as he strove to follow you."[283] Then he heaps blame on
+his own head, bitterly accusing himself because he had brought his
+brother to such a pass of sorrow. In this letter he throws great blame
+upon Hortensius, whom together with Pompey he accuses of betraying him.
+What truth there may have been in this accusation as to Hortensius we
+have no means of saying. He couples Pompey in the same charge, and as to
+Pompey's treatment of him there can be no doubt. Pompey had been untrue
+to his promises because of his bond with Cęsar. It is probable that
+Hortensius had failed to put himself forward on Cicero's behalf with
+that alacrity which the one advocate had expected from the other. Cicero
+and Hortensius were friends afterward, but so were Cicero and Pompey.
+Cicero was forgiving by nature, and also by self-training. It did not
+suit his purposes to retain his enmities. Had there been a possibility
+of reconciling Antony to the cause of the "optimates" after the
+Philippics, he would have availed himself of it.
+
+Cicero at one time intended to go to Buthrotum in Epirus, where Atticus
+possessed a house and property; but he changed his purpose. He remained
+at Thessalonica till November, and then returned to Dyrrachium, having
+all through his exile been kept alive by tidings of steps taken for his
+recall. There seems very soon to have grown up a feeling in Rome that
+the city had disgraced itself by banishing such a man; and Cęsar had
+gone to his provinces. We can well imagine that when he had once left
+Rome, with all his purposes achieved, having so far quieted the tongue
+of the strong speaker who might have disturbed them, he would take no
+further steps to perpetuate the orator's banishment. Then Pompey and
+Clodius soon quarrelled. Pompey, without Cęsar to direct him, found the
+arrogance of the Patrician Tribune insupportable. We hear of wheels
+within wheels, and stories within stories, in the drama of Roman history
+as it was played at this time. Together with Cicero, it had been
+necessary to Cęsar's projects that Cato also should be got out of Rome;
+and this had been managed by means of Clodius, who had a bill passed for
+the honorable employment of Cato on state purposes in Cyprus. Cato had
+found himself obliged to go. It was as though our Prime-minister had got
+parliamentary authority for sending a noisy member of the Opposition to
+Asiatic Turkey for six months There was an attempt, or an alleged
+attempt, of Clodius to have Pompey murdered; and there was
+street-fighting, so that Pompey was besieged, or pretended to be
+besieged, in his own house. "We might as well seek to set a charivari to
+music as to write the history of this political witches' revel," says
+Mommsen, speaking of the state of Rome when Cęsar was gone, Cicero
+banished, and Pompey supposed to be in the ascendant.[284] There was, at
+any rate, quarrelling between Clodius and Pompey, in the course of which
+Pompey was induced to consent to Cicero's return. Then Clodius took upon
+himself, in revenge, to turn against the Triumvirate altogether, and to
+repudiate even Cęsar himself. But it was all a vain hurly-burly, as to
+which Cęsar, when he heard the details in Gaul, could only have felt how
+little was to be gained by maintaining his alliance with Pompey. He had
+achieved his purpose, which he could not have done without the
+assistance of Crassus, whose wealth, and of Pompey, whose authority,
+stood highest in Rome; and now, having had his legions voted to him, and
+his provinces, and his prolonged term of years, he cared nothing for
+either of them.
+
+There is a little story which must be repeated, as against Cicero, in
+reference to this period of his exile, because it has been told in all
+records of his life. Were I to omit the little story, it would seem as
+though I shunned the records which have been repeated as opposed to his
+credit. He had written, some time back, a squib in which he had been
+severe upon the elder Curio; so it is supposed; but it matters little
+who was the object or what the subject. This had got wind in Rome, as
+such matters do sometimes, and he now feared that it would do him a
+mischief with the Curios and the friends of the Curios. The authorship
+was only matter of gossip. Could it not be denied? "As it is written,"
+says Cicero, "in a style inferior to that which is usual to me, can it
+not be shown not to have been mine?"[285] Had Cicero possessed all the
+Christian virtues, as we hope that prelates and pastors possess them in
+this happy land, he would not have been betrayed into, at any rate, the
+expression of such a wish. As it is, the enemies of Cicero must make the
+most of it. His friends, I think, will look upon it leniently.
+
+Continued efforts were made among Cicero's friends at Rome to bring him
+back, with which he was not altogether contented. He argues the matter
+repeatedly with Atticus, not always in the best temper. His friends at
+Rome were, he thought, doing the matter amiss: they would fail, and he
+would still have to finish his days abroad. Atticus, in his way to
+Epirus, visits him at Dyrrachium, and he is sure that Atticus would not
+have left Rome but that the affair was hopeless. The reader of the
+correspondence is certainly led to the belief that Atticus must have
+been the most patient of friends; but he feels, at the same time, that
+Atticus would not have been patient had not Cicero been affectionate and
+true. The Consuls for the new year were Lentulus and Metellus Nepos. The
+former was Cicero's declared friend, and the other had already abandoned
+his enmity. Clodius was no longer Tribune, and Pompey had been brought
+to yield. The Senate were all but unanimous. But there was still life in
+Clodius and his party; and day dragged itself after day, and month after
+month, while Cicero still lingered at Dyrrachium, waiting till a bill
+should have been passed by the people. Pompey, who was never
+whole-hearted in anything, had declared that a bill voted by the people
+would be necessary. The bill at last was voted, on the 14th of August,
+and Cicero, who knew well what was being done at Rome, passed over from
+Dyrrachium to Brundisium on the same day, having been a year and four
+months absent from Rome. During the year B.C. 57, up to the time of his
+return, he wrote but three letters that have come to us--two very short
+notes to Atticus, in the first of which he declares that he will come
+over on the authority of a decree of the Senate, without waiting for a
+law. In the second he falls again into despair, declaring that
+everything is over. In the third he asks Metellus for his aid, telling
+the Consul that unless it be given soon the man for whom it is asked
+will no longer be living to receive it. Metellus did give the aid very
+cordially.
+
+It has been remarked that Cicero did nothing for literature during his
+banishment, either by writing essays or preparing speeches; and it has
+been implied that the prostration of mind arising from his misfortunes
+must have been indeed complete, when a man whose general life was made
+marvellous by its fecundity had been repressed into silence. It should,
+however, be borne in mind that there could be no inducement for the
+writing of speeches when there was no opportunity of delivering them. As
+to his essays, including what we call his Philosophy and his Rhetoric,
+they who are familiar with his works will remember how apt he was, in
+all that he produced, to refer to the writings of others. He translates
+and he quotes, and he makes constant use of the arguments and
+illustrations of those who have gone before him. He was a man who rarely
+worked without the use of a library. When I think how impossible it
+would be for me to repeat this oft-told tale of Cicero's life without a
+crowd of books within reach of my hand, I can easily understand why
+Cicero was silent at Thessalonica and Dyrrachium. It has been remarked
+also by a modern critic that we find "in the letters from exile a
+carelessness and inaccuracy of expression which contrasts strongly with
+the style of his happier days." I will not for a moment put my judgment
+in such a matter in opposition to that of Mr. Tyrrell--but I should
+myself have been inclined rather to say that the style of Cicero's
+letters varies constantly, being very different when used to Atticus, or
+to his brother, or to lighter friends such as Poetus and Trebatius; and
+very different again when business of state was in hand, as are his
+letters to Decimus Brutus, Cassius Brutus, and Plancus. To be correct in
+familiar letters is not to charm. A studied negligence is needed to make
+such work live to posterity--a grace of loose expression which may
+indeed have been made easy by use, but which is far from easy to the
+idle and unpractised writer. His sorrow, perhaps, required a style of
+its own. I have not felt my own untutored perception of the language to
+be offended by unfitting slovenliness in the expression of his grief.
+
+
+
+
+APPENDICES TO VOLUME I.
+
+
+
+
+APPENDIX A.
+
+
+(_See_ ch. II., note [39])
+
+_THE BATTLE OF THE EAGLE AND THE SERPENT._
+
+    Homer, Iliad, lib. xii, 200:
+
+    [Greek:
+    Hoi rh' eti mermźrizon ephestaotes para taphrōi.
+    Ornis gar sphin epźlthe perźsemenai memaōsin,
+    Aietos upsipetźs ep' aristera laon eergōn,
+    Phoinźenta drakonta pherōn onuchessi pelōron,
+    Zōon et' aspaironta; kai oupō lźtheto charmźs.
+    Kopse gar auton echonta kata stźthos para deirźn,
+    Idnōtheis opisō; ho d' apo ethen źke chamaze,
+    Algźsas odunźisi, mesoi d' eni kabbal' homilōi;
+    Autos de klanxas peteto pnoźis anemoio.]
+
+Pope's translation of the passage, book xii, 231:
+
+   "A signal omen stopp'd the passing host,
+    The martial fury in their wonder lost.
+    Jove's bird on sounding pinions beat the skies;
+    A bleeding serpent, of enormous size,
+    His talons trussed; alive, and curling round,
+    He stung the bird, whose throat received the wound.
+    Mad with the smart, he drops the fatal prey,
+    In airy circles wings his painful way,
+    Floats on the winds, and rends the heav'ns with cries.
+    Amid the host the fallen serpent lies.
+    They, pale with terror, mark its spires unroll'd,
+    And Jove's portent with beating hearts behold."
+
+Lord Derby's Iliad, book xii, 236:
+
+   "For this I read the future, if indeed
+    To us, about to cross, this sign from Heaven
+    Was sent, to leftward of the astonished crowd:
+    A soaring eagle, bearing in his claws
+    A dragon huge of size, of blood-red hue,
+    Alive; yet dropped him ere he reached his home,
+    Nor to his nestlings bore the intended prey."
+
+Cicero's telling of the story:
+
+   "Hic Jovis altisoni subito pinnata satelles,
+    Arboris e trunco serpentis saucia morsu,
+    Ipsa feris subigit transfigens unguibus anguem
+    Semianimum, et varia graviter cervice micantem.
+    Quem se intorquentem lanians, rostroque cruentans,
+    Jam satiata animum, jam duros ulta dolores,
+    Abjicit efflantem, et laceratum affligit in unda;
+    Seque obitu a solis nitidos convertit ad ortus."
+
+Voltaire's translation:
+
+   "Tel on voit cet oiseau qui porte le tonnerre,
+    Blessé par un serpent élancé de la terre;
+    Il s'envole, il entraīne au séjour azuré
+    L'ennemi tortueux dont il est entouré.
+    Le sang tombe des airs. Il déchire, il dévore
+    Le reptile acharné qui le combat encore;
+    Il le perce, il le tient sous ses ongles vainqueurs;
+    Par cent coups redoublés il venge ses douleurs.
+    Le monstre, en expirant, se débat, se replie;
+    Il exhale en poisons les restes de sa vie;
+    Et l'aigle, tout sanglant, fier et victorieux,
+    Le rejette en fureur, et plane au haut des cieux."
+
+Virgil's version, Ęneid, lib. xi., 751:
+
+   "Utque volans alte raptum quum fulva draconem
+    Fert aquila, implicuitque pedes, atque unguibus hęsit
+    Saucius at serpens sinuosa volumina versat,
+    Arrectisque horret squamis, et sibilat ore,
+    Arduus insurgens. Illa haud minus urget obunco
+    Luctantem rostro; simul ęthera verberat alis."
+
+Dryden's translation from Virgil's Ęneid, book xi.:
+
+   "So stoops the yellow eagle from on high,
+    And bears a speckled serpent through the sky;
+    Fastening his crooked talons on the prey,
+    The prisoner hisses through the liquid way;
+    Resists the royal hawk, and though opprest,
+    She fights in volumes, and erects her crest.
+    Turn'd to her foe, she stiffens every scale,
+    And shoots her forky tongue, and whisks her threatening tail.
+    Against the victor all defence is weak.
+    Th' imperial bird still plies her with his beak:
+    He tears her bowels, and her breast he gores,
+    Then claps his pinions, and securely soars."
+
+Pitt's translation, book xi.:
+
+   "As when th' imperial eagle soars on high,
+    And bears some speckled serpent through the sky,
+    While her sharp talons gripe the bleeding prey,
+    In many a fold her curling volumes play,
+    Her starting brazen scales with horror rise,
+    The sanguine flames flash dreadful from her eyes
+    She writhes, and hisses at her foe, in vain,
+    Who wins at ease the wide ęrial plain,
+    With her strong hooky beak the captive plies,
+    And bears the struggling prey triumphant through the skies."
+
+Shelley's version of the battle, The Revolt of Islam, canto i.:
+
+      "For in the air do I behold indeed
+       An eagle and a serpent wreathed in fight,
+       And now relaxing its impetuous flight,
+       Before the ęrial rock on which I stood
+       The eagle, hovering, wheeled to left and right,
+       And hung with lingering wings over the flood,
+    And startled with its yells the wide air's solitude
+
+      "A shaft of light upon its wings descended,
+       And every golden feather gleamed therein--
+       Feather and scale inextricably blended
+       The serpent's mailed and many-colored skin
+       Shone through the plumes, its coils were twined within
+       By many a swollen and knotted fold, and high
+       And far, the neck receding lithe and thin,
+       Sustained a crested head, which warily
+    Shifted and glanced before the eagle's steadfast eye.
+
+      "Around, around, in ceaseless circles wheeling,
+       With clang of wings and scream, the eagle sailed
+       Incessantly--sometimes on high concealing
+       Its lessening orbs, sometimes, as if it failed,
+       Drooped through the air, and still it shrieked and wailed,
+       And casting back its eager head, with beak
+       And talon unremittingly assailed
+       The wreathed serpent, who did ever seek
+    Upon his enemy's heart a mortal wound to wreak
+
+      "What life, what power was kindled, and arose
+       Within the sphere of that appalling fray!
+       For, from the encounter of those wond'rous foes,
+       A vapor like the sea's suspended spray
+       Hung gathered; in the void air, far away,
+       Floated the shattered plumes; bright scales did leap,
+       Where'er the eagle's talons made their way,
+       Like sparks into the darkness; as they sweep,
+    Blood stains the snowy foam of the tumultuous deep.
+
+      "Swift chances in that combat--many a check,
+       And many a change--a dark and wild turmoil;
+       Sometimes the snake around his enemy's neck
+       Locked in stiff rings his adamantine coil,
+       Until the eagle, faint with pain and toil,
+       Remitted his strong flight, and near the sea
+       Languidly fluttered, hopeless so to foil
+       His adversary, who then reared on high
+    His red and burning crest, radiant with victory.
+
+      "Then on the white edge of the bursting surge,
+       Where they had sunk together, would the snake
+       Relax his suffocating grasp, and scourge
+       The wind with his wild writhings; for, to break
+       That chain of torment, the vast bird would shake
+       The strength of his unconquerable wings
+       As in despair, and with his sinewy neck
+       Dissolve in sudden shock those linked rings,
+    Then soar--as swift as smoke from a volcano springs.
+
+      "Wile baffled wile, and strength encountered strength,
+       Thus long, but unprevailing--the event
+       Of that portentous fight appeared at length.
+       Until the lamp of day was almost spent
+       It had endured, when lifeless, stark, and rent,
+       Hung high that mighty serpent, and at last
+       Fell to the sea, while o'er the continent,
+       With clang of wings and scream, the eagle past,
+    Heavily borne away on the exhausted blast."
+
+I have repudiated the adverse criticism on Cicero's poetry which has
+been attributed to Juvenal; but, having done so, am bound in fairness
+to state that which is to be found elsewhere in any later author of
+renown as a classic. In the treatise De Oratoribus, attributed to
+Tacitus, and generally published with his works by him--a treatise
+commenced, probably, in the last year of Vespasian's reign, and
+completed only in that of Domitian--Cicero as a poet is spoken of
+with a severity of censure which the writer presumes to have been his
+recognized desert. "For Cęsar," he says, "and Brutus made verses, and
+sent them to the public libraries; not better, indeed, than Cicero, but
+with less of general misfortune, because only a few people knew that
+they had done so." This must be taken for what it is worth. The treatise,
+let it have been written by whom it might, is full of wit, and is
+charming in language and feeling. It is a dialogue after the manner of
+Cicero himself, and is the work of an author well conversant with the
+subjects in hand. But it is, no doubt, the case that those two
+unfortunate lines which have been quoted became notorious in Rome when
+there was a party anxious to put down Cicero.
+
+
+
+
+APPENDIX B.
+
+
+(_See_ ch. IV., note [84])
+
+FROM THE BRUTUS--CA. XCII., XCIII.
+
+"There were at that time two orators, Cotta and Hortensius, who
+towered above all others, and incited me to rival them. The first
+spoke with self-restraint and moderation, clearly and easily,
+expressing his ideas in appropriate language. The other was
+magnificent and fierce; not such as you remember him, Brutus, when he
+was already failing, but full of life both in his words and actions. I
+then resolved that Hortensius should, of the two, be my model, because
+I felt myself like to him in his energy, and nearer to him in his age.
+I observed that when they were in the same causes, those for Canuleius
+and for our consular Dolabella, though Cotta was the senior counsel,
+Hortensius took the lead. A large gathering of men and the noise of
+the Forum require that a speaker shall be quick, on fire, active, and
+loud. The year after my return from Asia I undertook the charge of
+causes that were honorable, and in that year I was seeking to be
+Quęstor, Cotta to be Consul, and Hortensius to be Prętor. Then for a
+year I served as Quęstor in Sicily. Cotta, after his Consulship, went
+as governor into Gaul, and then Hortensius was, and was considered to
+be, first at the bar. When I had been back from Sicily twelve months
+I began to find that whatever there was within me had come to such
+perfection as it might attain. I feel that I am speaking too much of
+myself, but it is done, not that you may be made to own my ability or
+my eloquence--which is far from my thoughts--but that you may see how
+great was my toil and my industry. Then, when I had been employed for
+nearly five years in many cases, and was accounted a leading advocate,
+I specially concerned myself in conducting the great cause on behalf
+of Sicily--the trial of Verres--when I and Hortensius were Ędile and
+Consul designate.
+
+"But as this discussion of ours is intended to produce not a mere
+catalogue of orators, but some true lessons of oratory, let us see
+what there was in Hortensius that we must blame. When he was out of
+his Consulship, seeing that among past Consuls there was no one on a
+par with him, and thinking but little of those who were below consular
+rank, he became idle in his work to which from boyhood he had devoted
+himself, and chose to live in the midst of his wealth, as he thought
+a happier life--certainly an easier one. The first two or three years
+took off something from him. As the gradual decay of a picture will
+be observed by the true critic, though it be not seen by the world at
+large, so was it with his decay. From day to day he became more and
+more unlike his old self, failing in all branches of oratory, but
+specially in the rapidity and continuity of his words. But for myself
+I never rested, struggling always to increase whatever power there was
+in me by practice of every kind, especially in writing. Passing over
+many things in the year after I was Ędile, I will come to that in
+which I was elected first Prętor, to the great delight of the public
+generally; for I had gained the good-will of men, partly by my
+attention to the causes which I undertook, but specially by a certain
+new strain of eloquence, as excellent as it was uncommon, with which
+I spoke." Cicero, when he wrote this of himself, was an old man
+sixty-two years of age, broken hearted for the loss of his daughter,
+to whom it was no doubt allowed among his friends to praise himself
+with the garrulity of years, because it was understood that he had
+been unequalled in the matter of which he was speaking. It is easy for
+us to laugh at his boastings; but the account which he gives of his
+early life, and of the manner in which he attained the excellence for
+which he had been celebrated, is of value.
+
+
+
+
+APPENDIX C.
+
+
+(_See_ ch. VI., note [117])
+
+There was still prevailing in Rome at this time a strong feeling that
+a growing taste for these ornamental luxuries was injurious to the
+Republic, undermining its simplicity and weakening its stability. We
+are well aware that its simplicity was a thing of the past, and its
+stability gone The existence of a Verres is proof that it was so; but
+still the feeling remained--and did remain long after the time of
+Cicero--that these beautiful things were a sign of decay. We know
+how conquering Rome caught the taste for them from conquered Greece.
+"Gręcia capta ferum victorem cepit, et artes intulit agresti Latio."
+[286] Cicero submitted himself to this new captivity readily, but with
+apologies, as shown in his pretended abnegation of all knowledge
+of art. Two years afterward, in a letter to Atticus, giving him
+instructions as to the purchase of statues, he declares that he is
+altogether carried away by his longing for such things, but not
+without a feeling of shame. "Nam in eo genere sic studio efferimur ut
+abs te adjuvandi, ab aliis propre reprehendi simus"[287]--"Though you
+will help me, others I know will blame me." The same feeling is
+expressed beautifully, but no doubt falsely, by Horace when he
+declares, as Cicero had done, his own indifference to such delicacies:
+
+    "Gems, marbles, ivory, Tuscan statuettes,
+     Pictures, gold plate, Gętulian coverlets,
+     There are who have not. One there is, I trow,
+     Who cares not greatly if he has or no."[288]
+
+Many years afterward, in the time of Tiberius, Velleius Paterculus says
+the same when he is telling how ignorant Mummius was of sculpture, who,
+when he had taken Corinth, threatened those who had to carry away the
+statues from their places, that if they broke any they should be made to
+replace them. "You will not doubt, however," the historian says, "that
+it would have been better for the Republic to remain ignorant of these
+Corinthian gems than to understand them as well as it does now. That
+rudeness befitted the public honor better than our present taste."[289]
+Cicero understood well enough, with one side of his intelligence, that
+as the longing for these things grew in the minds of rich men, as the
+leading Romans of the day became devoted to luxury rather than to work,
+the ground on which the Republic stood must be sapped. A Marcellus or a
+Scipio had taken glory in ornamenting the city. A Verres or even an
+Hortensius--even a Cicero--was desirous of beautiful things for his own
+house. But still, with the other side of his intelligence, he saw that a
+perfect citizen might appreciate art, and yet do his duty, might
+appreciate art, and yet save his country. What he did not see was, that
+the temptations of luxury, though compatible with virtue, are
+antagonistic to it. The camel may be made to go through the eye of the
+needle--but it is difficult.
+
+
+
+
+APPENDIX D.
+
+
+(_See_ ch. VII., note [144])
+
+PRO LEGE MANILIA--CA. X., XVI.
+
+"Utinam, Quirites, virorum fortium, atque innocentium copiam tantam
+haberetis, ut hęc vobis deliberatio difficilis esset, quemnam
+potissimum tantis rebus ac tanto bello pręficiendum putaretis! Nunc
+vero cum sit unus Cn. Pompeius, qui non modo eorum hominum, qui nunc
+sunt, gloriam, sed etiam antiquitatis memoriam virtute superarit; quę
+res est, quę cujusquam animum in hac causa dubium facere posset?
+Ego enim sic existimo, in summo imperatore quatuor has res inesse
+oportere, scientiam rei militaris, virtutem, auctoritatem,
+felicitatem. Quis igitur hoc homine scientior umquam aut fuit, aut
+esse debuit? qui e ludo, atque pueritię disciplina, bello maximo
+atque acerrimis hostibus, ad patris exercitum atque in militię
+disciplinam profectus est? qui extrema pueritia miles fuit summi
+imperatoris? ineunte adolescentia maximi ipse exercitus imperator? qui
+sępius cum hoste conflixit, quam quisquam cum inimico concertavit?
+plura bella gessit, quam cęteri legerunt? plures provincias confecit,
+quam alii concupiverunt? cujus adolescentia ad scientiam rei militaris
+non alienis pręceptis, sed suis imperiis; non offensionibus belli,
+sed victoriis; non stipendiis, sed triumphis est erudita? Quod
+denique genus belli esse potest, in quo illum non exercuerit fortuna
+reipublicę? Civile; Africanum; Transalpinum; Hispaniense; mistum
+ex civitatibus atque ex bellicosissimis nationibus servile; navale
+bellum, varia et diversa genera, et bellorum et hostium, non solum
+gesta ab hoc uno, sed etiam confecta, nullam rem esse declarant, in
+usu militari positam, quę hojus viri scientiam fugere posset.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Quare cum et bellum ita necessarium sit, ut negligi non possit; ita
+magnum, ut accuratissime sit administrandum; et cum ei imperatorem
+pręficere possitis, in quo sit eximia belli scientia, singularis
+virtus, clarissima auctoritas, egregia fortuna; dubitabitis, Quirites,
+quin hoc tantum boni, quod vobis a diis immortalibus oblatum et datum
+est, in rempublicam conservandam atque amplificandam conferatis?"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"I could wish, Quirites, that there was open to you so large a choice
+of men capable at the same time, and honest, that you might find a
+difficulty in deciding who might best be selected for command in a
+war so momentous as this. But now when Pompey alone has surpassed in
+achievements not only those who live, but all of whom we have read in
+history, what is there to make any one hesitate in the matter? In my
+opinion there are four qualities to be desired in a general--military
+knowledge, valor, authority, and fortune. But whoever was or was ever
+wanted to be more skilled than this man, who, taken fresh from school
+and from the lessons of his boyhood, was subjected to the discipline
+of his father's army during one of our severest wars, when our enemies
+were strong against us? In his earliest youth he served under our
+greatest general. As years went on he was himself in command over
+a large army. He has been more frequent in fighting than others in
+quarrelling. Few have read of so many battles as he has fought.
+He has conquered more provinces than others have desired to pillage. He
+learned the art of war not from written precepts, but by his own
+practice; not from reverses, but from victories. He does not count his
+campaigns, but the triumphs which he has won. What nature of warfare is
+there in which the Republic has not used his services? Think of our
+Civil war[290]--of our African war[291]--of our war on the other side of
+the Alps[292]--of our Spanish wars[293]--of our Servile war[294]--which
+was carried on by the energies of so many mighty people--and this
+Maritime war.[295] How many enemies had we, how various were our
+contests! They were all not only carried through by this one man, but
+brought to an end so gloriously as to show that there is nothing in the
+practice of warfare which has escaped his knowledge.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Seeing, therefore, that this war cannot be neglected; that its
+importance demands the utmost care in its administration; that it
+requires a general in whom should be found sure military science,
+manifest valor, conspicuous authority, and pre-eminent good
+fortune--do you doubt, Quirites, but that you should use the great
+blessing which the gods have given you for the preservation and glory
+of the Republic?"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+On reading, however, the piece over again, I almost doubt whether
+there be any passages in it which should be selected as superior to
+others.
+
+
+
+
+APPENDIX E.
+
+
+(_See_ ch. XI., note [235])
+
+_LUCAN, LIBER I._
+
+    "O male concordes, nimiaque cupidine cęci,
+     Quid miscere juvat vires orbemque tenere
+     In medio."
+
+    "Temporis angusti mansit concordia discors,
+     Paxque fuit non sponte ducum. Nam sola futuri
+     Crassus erat belli medius mora. Qualiter undas
+     Qui secat, et geminum gracilis mare separat isthmos,
+     Nec patitur conferre fretum; si terra recedat,
+     Ionium Ęgęo frangat mare. Sic, ubi sęva
+     Arma ducum dirimens, miserando funere Crassus
+     Assyrias latio maculavit sanguine Carras."
+
+    "Dividitur ferro regnum; populique potentis,
+     Quę mare, quę terras, quę totum possidet orbem,
+     Non cepit fortuna duos."
+
+    "Tu nova ne veteres obscurent acta triumphos,
+     Et victis cedat piratica laurea Gallis,
+     Magne, times; te jam series, ususque laborum
+     Erigit, impatiensque loci fortuna secundi.
+     Nec quemquam jam ferre potest Cęsarve priorem,
+     Pompeiusve parem. Quis justius induit arma,
+     Scire nefas; magno se judice quisque tuetur,
+     Victrix causa deis placuit sed victa, Catoni.[296]
+     Nec coiere pares; alter vergentibus annis
+     In senium, longoque togę tranquillior usu
+     Dedidicit jam pace ducem; famęque petitor
+     Multa dare in vulgas; totus popularibus auris
+     Impelli, plausuque sui gaudere theatri;
+     Nec reparare novas vires, multumque priori
+     Credere fortunę. Stat magni nominis umbra."
+
+                     "Sed non in Cęsare tantum
+     Nomen erat, nec fama ducis; sed nescia virtus
+     Stare loco; solusque pudor non vincere bello.
+     Acer et indomitus; quo spes, quoque ira vocasset,
+     Ferre manum, et nunquam te merando parcere ferro;
+     Successus urgere suos; instare favori
+     Numinis."--Lucan, lib. i.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"O men so ill-fitted to agree, O men blind with greed, of what service
+can it be that you should join your powers, and possess the world
+between you?"
+
+"For a short time the ill-sorted compact lasted, and there was a peace
+which each of them abhorred. Crassus alone stood between the others,
+hindering for a while the coming war--as an isthmus separates two
+waters and forbids sea to meet sea. If the morsel of land gives way,
+the Ionian waves and the Ęgean dash themselves in foam against each
+other. So was it with the arms of the two chiefs when Crassus fell,
+and drenched the Assyrian Carrę with Roman blood."
+
+"Then the possession of the Empire was put to the arbitration of the
+sword. The fortunes of a people which possessed sea and earth and the
+whole world, were not sufficient for two men."
+
+"You, Magnus, you, Pompeius, fear lest newer deeds than yours should
+make dull your old triumphs, and the scattering of the pirates should
+be as nothing to the conquering of Gaul. The practice of many wars has
+so exalted you, O Cęsar, that you cannot put up with a second place.
+Cęsar will endure no superior; but Pompey will have no equal. Whose
+cause was the better the poet dares not inquire! Each will have his
+own advocate in history. On the side of the conqueror the gods ranged
+themselves. Cato has chosen to follow the conquered.
+
+"But surely the men were not equal. The one in declining years, who
+had already changed his arms for the garb of peace, had unlearned the
+general in the statesman--had become wont to talk to the people,
+to devote himself to harangues, and to love the applause of his own
+theatre. He has not cared to renew his strength, trusting to his old
+fortune. There remains of him but the shadow of his great name."
+
+"The name of Cęsar does not loom so large; nor is his character as a
+general so high. But there is a spirit which can content itself with
+no achievements; there is but one feeling of shame--that of not
+conquering; a man determined, not to be controlled, taking his arms
+wherever lust of conquest or anger may call him; a man never sparing
+the sword, creating all things from his own good-fortune trusting
+always the favors of the gods."
+
+    [1] Froude's Cęsar, p. 444.
+
+    [2] Ibid., p. 428.
+
+    [3] Ad Att., lib. xiii., 28.
+
+    [4] Ad Att., lib. ix., 10.
+
+    [5] Froude, p. 365.
+
+    [6] Ad Att., lib. ii., 5: "Quo quidem uno ego ab istis
+    capi possum."
+
+    [7] The Cincian law, of which I shall have to speak
+    again, forbade Roman advocates to take any payment for
+    their services. Cicero expressly declares that he has
+    always obeyed that law. He accused others of disobeying
+    it, as, for instance, Hortensius. But no contemporary
+    has accused him. Mr. Collins refers to some books which
+    had been given to Cicero by his friend P[oe]tus. They are
+    mentioned in a letter to Atticus, lib. i., 20; and
+    Cicero, joking, says that he has consulted
+    Cincius--perhaps some descendant of him who made the law
+    145 years before--as to the legality of accepting the
+    present. But we have no reason for supposing that he had
+    ever acted as an advocate for P[oe]tus.
+
+    [8] Virgil, Ęneid, i., 150:
+
+     "Ac, veluti magno in populo quum sępe coorta est
+      Seditio, sęvitque animis ignobile vulgus;
+      Jamque faces, et saxa volant; furor arma ministrat:
+      Tum, pietate gravem ac meritis si forte virum quem
+      Conspexere, silent, arrectisque auribus adstant;
+      Iste regit dictis animos, et pectora mulcet."
+
+    [9] The author is saying that a history from Cicero
+    would have been invaluable, and the words are "interitu
+    ejus utrum respublica an historia magis doleat."
+
+    [10] Quintilian tells us this, lib. ii., c. 5. The
+    passage of Livy is not extant. The commentators suppose
+    it to have been taken from a letter to his son.
+
+    [11] Velleius Paterculus, lib. ii., c. 34.
+
+    [12] Valerius Maximus, lib. iv., c. 2; 4.
+
+    [13] Pliny, Hist. Nat., lib. vii., xxxi., 30.
+
+    [14] Martial, lib. xiv., 188.
+
+    [15] Lucan, lib. vii., 62:
+
+     "Cunctorum voces Romani maximus auctor
+      Tullius eloquii, cujus sub jure togaque
+      Pacificas sęvus tremuit Catilina secures,
+      Pertulit iratus bellis, cum rostra forumque
+      Optaret passus tam longa silentia miles
+      Addidit invalidę robur facundia causę."
+
+    [16] Tacitus, De Oratoribus, xxx.
+
+    [17] Juvenal, viii., 243.
+
+    [18] Demosthenes and Cicero compared.
+
+    [19] Quintilian, xii., 1.
+
+    [20] "Repudiatus vigintiviratus." He refused a position
+    of official value rendered vacant by the death of one
+    Cosconius. See Letters to Atticus, 2,19.
+
+    [21] Florus, lib. iv., 1. In a letter from Essex to Foulke
+    Greville, the writing of which has been attributed to
+    Bacon by Mr. Spedding, Florus is said simply to have
+    epitomized Livy (Life, vol. ii., p. 23). In this I think
+    that Bacon has shorn him of his honors.
+
+    [22] Florus, lib. iv., 1.
+
+    [23] Sallust, Catilinaria, xxiii.
+
+    [24] I will add the concluding passage from the pseudo
+    declamation, in order that the reader may see the nature
+    of the words which were put into Sallust's mouth: "Quos
+    tyrannos appellabas, eorum nunc potentię faves; qui
+    tibi ante optumates videbantur, eosdem nunc dementes ac
+    furiosos vocas; Vatinii caussam agis, de Sextio male
+    existumas; Bibulum petulantissumis verbis lędis, laudas
+    Cęsarem; quem maxume odisti, ei maxume obsequeris.
+    Aliud stans, aliud sedens, de republica sentis; his
+    maledicis, illos odisti; levissume transfuga, neque in
+    hac, neque illa parte fidem habes." Hence Dio Cassius
+    declared that Cicero had been called a turncoat. [Greek:
+    kai automalos ōnomazeto.]
+
+    [25] Dio Cassius, lib. xlvi., 18: [Greek: pros hźn
+    kai autźn toiautas epistolas grapheis hoias an grapseien
+    anźr skōptolźs athuroglōrros ... kai proseti kai to
+    stoma autou diaballein epecheirźse tosautź aselgeia
+    kai akatharsia para panta ton bion chrōmenos hōste mźde
+    tōn sungenestatōn apechesthai, alla tźn te gunaika
+    proagōgeuein kai tźn thugatera moicheuein.]
+
+    [26] As it happens, De Quincey specially calls Cicero a
+    man of conscience. "Cicero is one of the very few pagan
+    statesmen who can be described as a thoroughly
+    conscientious man," he says. The purport of his
+    illogical essay on Cicero is no doubt thoroughly hostile
+    to the man. It is chiefly worth reading on account of
+    the amusing virulence with which Middleton, the
+    biographer, is attacked.
+
+    [27] Quintilian, lib. ii., c. 5.
+
+    [28] De Finibus, lib. v., ca. xxii.: "Nemo est igitur, qui
+    non hanc affectionem animi probet atque laudet."
+
+    [29] De Rep., lib. vi., ca. vii.: "Nihil est enim illi
+    principi deo, qui omnem hunc mundum regit, quod quidem
+    in terris fiat acceptius." Tusc. Quest., lib. i., ca. xxx.:
+    "Vetat enim dominans ille in nobis deus."
+
+    [30] De Rep., lib. vi., ca. vii.: "Certum esse in c[oe]lo
+    definitum locum, ubi beati ęvo sempiterno fruantur."
+
+    [31] Hor., lib. i., Ode xxii.,
+
+      "Non rura quę; Liris quieta
+       Mordet aqua taciturnus amnis."
+
+    [32] Such was the presumed condition of things at Rome.
+    By the passing of a special law a plebeian might, and
+    occasionally did, become patrician. The patricians had
+    so nearly died out in the time of Julius Cęsar that he
+    introduced fifty new families by the Lex Cassia.
+
+    [33] De Orat., lib. ii., ca. 1.
+
+    [34] Brutus, ca. lxxxix.
+
+    [35] It should be remembered that in Latin literature it
+    was the recognized practice of authors to borrow
+    wholesale from the Greek, and that no charge of
+    plagiarism attended such borrowing. Virgil, in taking
+    thoughts and language from Homer, was simply supposed to
+    have shown his judgment in accommodating Greek delights
+    to Roman ears and Roman intellects.
+
+    The idea as to literary larceny is of later date, and
+    has grown up with personal claims for originality and
+    with copyright. Shakspeare did not acknowledge whence he
+    took his plots, because it was unnecessary. Now, if a
+    writer borrow a tale from the French, it is held that he
+    ought at least to owe the obligation, or perhaps even
+    pay for it.
+
+    [36] Juvenal, Sat. x., 122,
+
+      "O fortunatam natam me Consule Romam!
+       Antoni gladios potuit contemnere, si sic
+       Omnia dixisset."
+
+    [37] De Leg., lib. i., ca. 1.
+
+    [38] Life and Times of Henry Lord Brougham, written by
+    himself, vol. i., p. 58.
+
+    [39] I give the nine versions to which I allude in an
+    Appendix A, at the end of this volume, so that those
+    curious in such matters may compare the words in which
+    the same picture has been drawn by various hands.
+
+    [40] Pro Archia, ca. vii.
+
+    [41] Brutus, ca. xc.
+
+    [42] Tacitus, De Oratoribus, xxx.
+
+    [43] Quintilian, lib. xii., c. vi., who wrote about the
+    same time as this essayist, tells us of these three
+    instances of early oratory, not, however, specifying the
+    exact age in either case. He also reminds us that
+    Demosthenes pleaded when he was a boy, and that Augustus
+    at the age of twelve made a public harangue in honor of
+    his grandmother.
+
+    [44] Brutus, ca. xc.
+
+    [45] Brutus, xci.
+
+    [46] Quintilian, lib. xii., vi.: "Quum jam clarum
+    meruisset inter patronos, qui tum erant, nomen, in Asiam
+    navigavit, seque et aliis sine dubio eloquentię ac
+    sapientię magistris, sed pręcipue tamen Apollonio
+    Moloni, quem Romę quoque audierat, Rhodi rursus
+    formandum ac velut recognendum dedit."
+
+    [47] Brutus, xci.
+
+    [48] The total correspondence contains 817 letters, of
+    which 52 were written to Cicero, 396 were written by
+    Cicero to Atticus, and 369 by Cicero to his friends in
+    general. We have no letters from Atticus to Cicero.
+
+    [49] Quintilian, lib. x., ca. 1.
+
+    [50] Clemens of Alexandria, in his exhortation to the
+    Gentiles, is very severe upon the iniquities of these
+    rites. "All evil be to him," he says, "who brought them
+    into fashion, whether it was Dardanus, or Eetion the
+    Thracian, or Midas the Phrygian." The old story which he
+    repeats as to Ceres and Proserpine may have been true,
+    but he was altogether ignorant of the changes which the
+    common-sense of centuries had produced.
+
+    [51] De Legibus, lib. ii., c. xiv.
+
+    [52] It was then that the foreign empire commenced, in
+    ruling which the simplicity and truth of purpose and
+    patriotism of the Republic were lost.
+
+    [53] The reverses of fortune to which Marius was
+    subjected, how he was buried up to his neck in the mud,
+    hiding in the marshes of Minturnę, how he would have
+    been killed by the traitorous magistrates of that city
+    but that he quelled the executioners by the fire of his
+    eyes; how he sat and glowered, a houseless exile, among
+    the ruins of Carthage--all which things happened to him
+    while he was running from the partisans of Sulla--are
+    among the picturesque episodes of history. There is a
+    tragedy called the _Wounds of Civil War_, written by
+    Lodge, who was born some eight years before Shakspeare,
+    in which the story of Marius is told with some exquisite
+    poetry, but also with some ludicrous additions. The Gaul
+    who is hired to kill Marius, but is frightened by his
+    eyes, talks bad French mingled with bad English, and
+    calls on Jesus in his horror!
+
+    [54] Brutus, ca. xc.
+
+    [55] Florus tells us that there were 2000 Senators and
+    Knights, but that any one was allowed to kill just whom
+    he would. "Quis autem illos potest computare quos in
+    urbe passim quisquis voluit occidit" (lib. iii., ca.
+    21).
+
+    [56] About £487 10_s._ In Smith's Dictionary of Greek and
+    Roman Antiquities the Attic talent is given as being
+    worth £243 15_s._ Mommsen quotes the price as 12,000
+    denarii, which would amount to about the same sum.
+
+    [57] Suetonius speaks of his death. Florus mentions the
+    proscriptions and abdication. Velleius Paterculus is
+    eloquent in describing the horrors of the massacres and
+    confiscation. Dio Cassius refers again and again to the
+    Sullan cruelty. But none of them give a reason for the
+    abdication of Sulla.
+
+    [58] Vol. iii., p. 386. I quote from Mr. Dickson's
+    translation, as I do not read German.
+
+    [59] In defending Roscius Amerinus, while Sulla was
+    still in power, he speaks of the Sullan massacres as
+    "pugna Cannensis," a slaughter as foul, as disgraceful,
+    as bloody as had been the defeat at Cannę.
+
+    [60] Mommsen, vol. iii., p. 385.
+
+    [61] Pro Sexto Roscio, ca. xxi.: "Quod antea causam
+    publicam nullam dixerim." He says also in the Brutus,
+    ca. xc., "Itaque prima causa publica, pro Sex. Roscio
+    dicta." By "publica causa" he means a criminal
+    accusation in distinction from a civil action.
+
+    [62] Pro Publio Quintio, ca. i.: "Quod mihi consuevit in
+    ceteris causis esse adjumento, id quoque in hac causa
+    deficit."
+
+    [63] Pro Publio Quintio, ca. xxi.: "Nolo eam rem
+    commemorando renovare, cujus omnino rei memoriam omnem
+    tolli funditus ac deleri arbitror oportere."
+
+    [64] Pro Roscio, ca. xlix. Cicero says of him that he
+    would be sure to suppose that anything would have been
+    done according to law of which he should be told that it
+    was done by Sulla's order. "Putat homo imperitus morum,
+    agricola et rusticus, ista omnia, quę vos per Sullam
+    gesta esse dicitis, more, lege, jure gentium facta."
+
+    [65] Pro Sexto Roscio, ca. 1.
+
+    [66] Pro Sexto Roscio, ca. xxix.: "Ejusmodi tempus erat,
+    inquit, ut homines vulgo impune occiderentur."
+
+    [67] Pro T. A. Milone, ca. xxi.: "Cur igitur cos
+    manumisit? Metuebat scilicit ne indicarent; ne dolorem
+    perferre non possent."
+
+    [68] Pro T. A. Milone, ca. xxii.: "Heus tu, Ruscio, verbi
+    gratia, cave sis mentiaris. Clodius insidias fecit
+    Miloni? Fecit. Certa crux. Nullas fecit. Sperata
+    libertas."
+
+    [69] Pro Sexto Roscio, ca. xxviii.
+
+    [70] Ibid.
+
+    [71] Ibid., ca. xxxi.
+
+    [72] Pro Sexto Roscio, ca. xlv.
+
+    [73] Pro Sexto Roscio, ca. xlvi. The whole picture of
+    Chrysogonus, of his house, of his luxuries, and his
+    vanity, is too long for quotation, but is worth
+    referring to by those who wish to see how bold and how
+    brilliant Cicero could be.
+
+    [74] They put in tablets of wax, on which they recorded
+    their judgment by inscribing letter, C, A, or
+    NL--Condemno, Absolvo, or Non liquet--intending to show
+    that the means of coming to a decision did not seem to
+    be sufficient.
+
+    [75] Quintilian tells us, lib. x., ca. vii., that Cicero's
+    speeches as they had come to his day had been
+    abridged--by which he probably means only arranged--by
+    Tiro, his slave and secretary and friend. "Nam Ciceronis
+    ad pręsens modo tempus aptatos libertus Tiro
+    contraxit."
+
+    [76] Quintilian, lib. xi., ca. iii.: "Nam et toga, et
+    calecus, et capillus, tam nimia cura, quam negligentia,
+    sunt reprehendenda." * * * "Sinistrum brachium eo usque
+    allevandum est, ut quasi normalem illum angulum faciat."
+    Quint., lib. xii., ca. x., "ne hirta toga sit;" don't let
+    the toga be rumpled; "non serica:" the silk here
+    interdicted was the silk of effeminacy, not that silk of
+    authority of which our barristers are proud. "Ne
+    intonsum caput; non in gradus atque annulos comptum." It
+    would take too much space were I to give here all the
+    lessons taught by this professor of deportment as to the
+    wearing of the toga.
+
+    [77] A doubt has been raised whether he was not married
+    when he went to Greece, as otherwise his daughter would
+    seem to have become a wife earlier than is probable. The
+    date, however, has been generally given as it is stated
+    here.
+
+    [78] Tacitus, Annal., xi., 5, says, "Qua cavetur
+    antiquitus, ne quis, ob causam orandam, pecuniam donumve
+    accipiat."
+
+    [79] De Off., lib. i., ca. xlii.: "Sordidi etiam putandi,
+    qui mercantur a mercatoribus, quod statim vendant. Nihil
+    enim proficiunt, nisi admodum mentiantur."
+
+    [80] De Off., lib. i., ca. xlii.: "Primum improbantur ii
+    quęstus, qui in odia hominum incurrunt: ut portitorum
+    ut f[oe]neratorum." The Portitores were inferior
+    collectors of certain dues, stationed at seaports, who
+    are supposed to have been extremely vexatious in their
+    dealings with the public.
+
+    [81] Philipp., 11-16.
+
+    [82] Let any who doubt this statement refer to the fate
+    of the inhabitants of Alesia and Uxellodunum. Cęsar did
+    not slay or torture for the sake of cruelty, but was
+    never deterred by humanity when expediency seemed to him
+    to require victims. Men and women, old and young, many
+    or few, they were sacrificed without remorse if his
+    purpose required it.
+
+    [83] Pro Pub. Quintio, ca. xxv.
+
+    [84] See Appendix B, Brutus, ca. xcii., xciii.
+
+    [85] Brutus, ca. xciii.: "Animos hominum ad me dicendi
+    novitate converteram."
+
+    [86] It must be remembered that this advice was actually
+    given when Cicero subsequently became a candidate for
+    the Consulship, but it is mentioned here as showing the
+    manner in which were sought the great offices of State.
+
+    [87] Cicero speaks of Sicily as divided into two
+    provinces, "Quęstores utriusque provincię." There was,
+    however, but one Prętor or Proconsul. But the island
+    had been taken by the Romans at two different times.
+    Lilybęum and the west was obtained from the
+    Carthaginians at the end of the first Punic war,
+    whereas, Syracuse was conquered by Marcellus and
+    occupied during the second Punic war.
+
+    [88] Tacitus, Ann., lib. xi., ca. xxii.: "Post, lege
+    Sullę, viginti creati supplendo senatui, cui judicia
+    tradiderat."
+
+    [89] De Legibus, iii., xii.
+
+    [90] Pro P. Sexto, lxv.
+
+    [91] Pro Cluentio, lvi.
+
+    [92] Contra Verrem, Act. iv., ca. xi.: "Ecquę civitas
+    est, non modo in provinciis nostris, verum etiam in
+    ultimis nationibus, aut tam potens, aut tam libera, aut
+    etiam am immanis ac barbara; rex denique ecquis est, qui
+    senatorem populi Romani tecto ac domo non invitet?"
+
+    [93] Contra Verrem, Act. i., ca. xiii.: "Omnia non modo
+    commemorabuntur, sed etiam, expositis certis rebus,
+    agentur, quę inter decem annos, posteaquam judicia ad
+    senatum translata sunt, in rebus judicandis nefarie
+    flagitioseque facta sunt."
+
+    Pro Cluentio, lvi.: "Locus, auctoritas, domi splendor,
+    apud exteras nationes nomen et gratia, toga prętexta,
+    sella curulis, insignia, fasces, exercitus, imperia,
+    provincia."
+
+    [94] Contra Verrem, Act. i., ca. xviii.: "Quadringenties
+    sestertium ex Sicilia contra leges abstulisse." In
+    Smith's Dictionary of Grecian and Roman Antiquities we
+    are told that a thousand sesterces is equal in our money
+    to £8 17_s._ 1_d._ Of the estimated amount of this plunder
+    we shall have to speak again.
+
+    [95] Pro Plancio, xxvi.
+
+    [96] Pro Plancio, xxvi.
+
+    [97] M. du Rozoir was a French critic, and was joined
+    with M. Guéroult and M. de Guerle in translating and
+    annotating the Orations of Cicero for M. Panckoucke's
+    edition of the Latin classics.
+
+    [98] In Verrem Actio Secunda, lib. i., vii.
+
+    [99] Plutarch says that Cęcilius was an emancipated
+    slave, and a Jew, which could not have been true, as he
+    was a Roman Senator.
+
+    [100] De Oratore, lib. ii., c. xlix. The feeling is
+    beautifully expressed in the words put into the mouth of
+    Antony in the discussion on the charms and attributes of
+    eloquence: "Qui mihi in liberum loco more majorum esse
+    deberet."
+
+    [101] In Q. Cęc. Divinatio, ca. ii.
+
+    [102] Divinatio, ca. iii.
+
+    [103] Ibid., ca. vi.
+
+    [104] Ibid., ca. viii.
+
+    [105] Divinatio, ca. ix.
+
+    [106] Ibid., ca. xi.
+
+    [107] Ibid.
+
+    [108] Ibid., ca. xii.
+
+    [109] Actio Secunda, lib. ii., xl. He is speaking of
+    Sthenius, and the illegality of certain proceedings on
+    the part of Verres against him. "If an accused man could
+    be condemned in the absence of the accuser, do you think
+    that I would have gone in a little boat from Vibo to
+    Velia, among all the dangers prepared for me by your
+    fugitive slaves and pirates, when I had to hurry at the
+    peril of my life, knowing that you would escape if I
+    were not present to the day?"
+
+    [110] Actio Secunda, l. xxi.
+
+    [111] In Verrem, Actio Prima, xvi.
+
+    [112] In Verrem, Actio Prima, xvi.
+
+    [113] We are to understand that the purchaser at the
+    auction having named the sum for which he would do the
+    work, the estate of the minor, who was responsible for
+    the condition of the temple, was saddled with that
+    amount.
+
+    [114] In Verrem, Actio Secunda, lib. ii., vii.
+
+    [115] Ibid., ix.
+
+    [116] Ibid., lib. ii., xiv.
+
+    [117] See Appendix C.
+
+    [118] In Verrem, Actio Secunda, lib. ii., ca. xxxvi.
+
+    [119] Ibid. "Una nox intercesserat, quam iste Dorotheum
+    sic diligebat, ut diceres, omnia inter eos esse
+    communia."--wife and all. "Iste" always means Verres in
+    these narratives.
+
+    [120] These were burning political questions of the
+    moment. It was as though an advocate of our days should
+    desire some disgraced member of Parliament to go down to
+    the House and assist the Government in protecting Turkey
+    in Asia and invading Zululand.
+
+    [121] "Sit in ejus exercitu signifer." The "ejus" was
+    Hortensius, the coming Consul, too whom Cicero intended
+    to be considered as pointing. For the passage, see In
+    Verrem, Actio Secunda, lib. ii., xxxi.
+
+    [122] In Verrem, Actio Secunda, lib. iii., 11.
+
+    [123] "Exegi monumentum ęre perennius," said Horace,
+    gloriously. "Sum pius Ęneas" is Virgil's expression,
+    put into the mouth of his hero. "Ipse Menaleas," said
+    Virgil himself. Homer and Sophocles introduce their
+    heroes with self-sounded trumpetings:
+
+      [Greek: Eim' Odysseus Daertiadźs hos pasi doloisi
+      Anthrōpoisi melō, kai meu kleos ouranon ikei.]
+      Odyssey, book ix., 19 and 20.
+
+      [Greek: Ho pasi kleinos Oidipous kaloumenos.]
+      [OE]dipus Tyrannus, 8.
+
+    [124] Pro Plancio, xxvi.: "Frumenti in summa caritate
+    maximum numerum miseram; negotiatoribus comis,
+    mercatoribus justus, municipibus liberalis, sociis
+    abstinens, omnibus eram visus in omni officio
+    diligentissimus."
+
+    [125] In Verrem, Actio Secunda, lib. iii., ix.: "Is erit
+    Apronius ille; qui, ut ipse non solum vita, sed etiam
+    corpore atque ore significat, immensa aliqua vorago est
+    ac gurges vitiorum turpitudinumque omnium. Hunc in
+    omnibus stupris, hunc in fanorum expilationibus, hunc in
+    impuris conviviis principem adhibebat; tantamque
+    habebat morum similitudo conjunctionem atque concordiam,
+    ut Apronius, qui aliis inhumanus ac barbarus, isti uni
+    commodus ac disertus videretur; ut quem omnes odissent
+    neque videre vellent sine eo iste esse non posset; ut
+    quum alii ne conviviis quidem iisdem quibus Apronius,
+    hic iisdem etiam poculis uteretur, postremo, ut, odor
+    Apronii teterrimus oris et corporis, quem, ut aiunt, ne
+    bestię quidem ferre possent, uni isti suavis et
+    jucundus videretur. Ille erat in tribunali proximus; in
+    cubiculo socius; in convivio dominus, ac tum maxime,
+    quum, accubante prętextato prętoris filio, in convivio
+    saltare nudus c[oe]perat."
+
+    [126] A great deal is said of the _Cybea_ in this and
+    the last speech. The money expended on it was passed
+    through the accounts as though the ship had been built
+    for the defence of the island from pirates, but it was
+    intended solely for the depository of the governor's
+    plunder.
+
+    [127] In Verrem, Actio Secunda, lib. iv., vii.
+
+    [128] In Verrem, Actio Secunda, lib. iv., lvii.
+
+    [129] In Verrem, Actio Secunda, lib. v., lxvi.: "Facinus
+    est vinciri civem Romanum; scelus verberari; prope
+    parricidium necari; quid dicam in crucem tollere!"
+
+    [130] In Verrem, Actio Secunda, lib. v., lxv.
+
+    [131] In Verrem, Actio Secunda, lib. v., xx.: "Onere suo
+    plane captam atque depressam."
+
+    [132] In Verrem, Actio Secunda, lib. v., xxvi.
+
+    [133] Ibid., xxviii.
+
+    [134] Pro Fonteio, xiii.
+
+    [135] De Oratore, lib. ii., lix.: "Perspicitis, hoc genus
+    quam sit facetum, quam elegans, quam oratorium, sive
+    habeas vere, quod narrare possis, quod tamen, est
+    mendaciunculis aspergendum, sive fingas." Either invent
+    a story, or if you have an old one, add on something so
+    as to make it really funny. Is there a parson, a bishop,
+    an archbishop, who, if he have any sense of humor about
+    him, does not do the same?
+
+    [136] Cicero, Pro Cluentio, l., explains very clearly
+    his own idea as to his own speeches as an advocate, and
+    may be accepted, perhaps, as explaining the ideas of
+    barristers of to-day. "He errs," he says, "who thinks
+    that he gets my own opinions in speeches made in law
+    courts; such speeches are what the special cases
+    require, and are not to be taken as coming from the
+    advocate as his own."
+
+    [137] When the question is discussed, we are forced
+    rather to wonder how many of the great historical doings
+    of the time are not mentioned, or are mentioned very
+    slightly, in Cicero's letters. Of Pompey's treatment of
+    the pirates, and of his battling in the East, little or
+    nothing is said, nothing of Cęsar's doings in Spain.
+    Mention is made of Cęsar's great operations in Gaul
+    only in reference to the lieutenancy of Cicero's brother
+    Quintus, and to the employment of his young friend
+    Trebatius. Nothing is said of the manner of Cęsar's
+    coming into Rome after passing the Rubicon; nothing of
+    the manner of fighting at Dyrrachium and Pharsalia; very
+    little of the death of Pompey; nothing of Cęsar's delay
+    in Egypt. The letters deal with Cicero's personal doings
+    and thoughts, and with the politics of Rome as a city.
+    The passage to which allusion is made occurs in the life
+    of Atticus, ca. xvi: "Quę qui legat non multum
+    desideret historiam contextam illorum temporum."
+
+    [138] Jean George Greefe was a German, who spent his
+    life as a professor at Leyden, and, among other
+    classical labors, arranged and edited the letters of
+    Cicero. He died in 1703.
+
+    [139] It must be explained, however, that continued
+    research and increased knowledge have caused the order
+    of the letters, and the dates assigned to them, to be
+    altered from time to time; and, though much has been
+    done to achieve accuracy, more remains to be done. In my
+    references to the letters I at first gave them, both to
+    the arrangement made by Gręvius and to the numbers
+    assigned in the edition I am using; but I have found
+    that the numbers would only mislead, as no numbering has
+    been yet adopted as fixed. Arbitrary and even fantastic
+    as is the arrangement of Gręvius, it is better to
+    confine myself to that because it has been acknowledged,
+    and will enable my readers to find the letters if they
+    wish to do so. Should Mr. Tyrrell continue and complete
+    his edition of the correspondence, he will go far to
+    achieve the desired accuracy. A second volume has
+    appeared since this work of mine has been in the press.
+
+    [140] The peculiarities of Cicero's character are
+    nowhere so clearly legible as in his dealings with and
+    words about his daughter. There is an effusion of love,
+    and then of sorrow when she dies, which is un-Roman,
+    almost feminine, but very touching.
+
+    [141] I annex a passage from our well known English
+    translation: "The power of the pirates had its
+    foundation in Cilicia. Their progress was the more
+    dangerous, because at first it had been but little
+    noticed. In the Mithridatic war they assumed new
+    confidence and courage, on account of some services
+    which they had rendered the king. After this, the Romans
+    being engaged in civil war at the very gates of their
+    capital, the sea was left unguarded, and the pirates by
+    degrees attempted higher things--not only attacking
+    ships, but islands and maritime towns. Many persons
+    distinguished for their wealth, birth and capacity
+    embarked with them, and assisted in their depredations,
+    as if their employment had been worthy the ambition of
+    men of honor. They had in various places arsenals,
+    ports, and watch-towers, all strongly fortified. Their
+    fleets were not only extremely well manned, supplied
+    with skilful pilots, and fitted for their business by
+    their lightness and celerity, but there was a parade of
+    vanity about them, more mortifying than their strength,
+    in gilded sterns, purple canopies, and plated oars, as
+    if they took a pride and triumphed in their villany.
+    Music resounded, and drunken revels were exhibited on
+    every coast. Here generals were made prisoners; and
+    there the cities which the pirates had seized upon were
+    paying their ransom, to the great disgrace of the Roman
+    power. The number of their galleys amounted to a
+    thousand, and the cities taken to four hundred." The
+    passage is taken from the life of Pompey.
+
+    [142] Florus, lib. iii., 6: "An felicitatem, quod ne una
+    cuidam navis amissa est; an vero perpetuitatem, quod
+    amplius piratę non fuerunt."
+
+    [143] Of the singular trust placed in Pompey there are
+    very many proofs in the history of Rome at this period,
+    but none, perhaps, clearer than the exception made in
+    this favor in the wording of laws. In the agrarian law
+    proposed by the Tribune Rullus, and opposed by Cicero
+    when he was Consul, there is a clause commanding all
+    Generals under the Republic to account for the spoils
+    taken by them in war. But there is a special exemption
+    in favor of Pompey. "Pompeius exceptus esto." It is as
+    though no Tribune dared to propose a law affecting
+    Pompey.
+
+    [144] See Appendix D.
+
+    [145] Asconius Pedianus was a grammarian who lived in
+    the reign of Tiberius, and whose commentaries on
+    Cicero's speeches, as far as they go, are very useful in
+    explaining to us the meaning of the orator. We have his
+    notes on these two Cornelian orations and some others,
+    especially on that of Pro Milone. There are also
+    commentaries on some of the Verrine orations--not by
+    Asconius, but from the pen of some writer now called
+    Pseudo-Asconius, having been long supposed to have come
+    from Asconius. They, too, go far to elucidate much which
+    would otherwise be dark to us.
+
+    [146] Quint., lib. viii., 3. The critic is explaining the
+    effect of ornament in oratory--of that beauty of
+    language which with the people has more effect than
+    argument--and he breaks forth himself into perhaps the
+    most eloquent passage in the whole Institute: "Cicero,
+    in pleading for Cornelius, fought with arms which were
+    as splendid as they were strong. It was not simply by
+    putting the facts before the judges, by talking
+    usefully, in good language and clearly, that he
+    succeeded in forcing the Roman people to acknowledge by
+    their voices and by their hands their admiration; it was
+    the grandeur of his words, their magnificence, their
+    beauty, their dignity, which produced that outburst."
+
+    [147] Orator., lxvii. and lxx.
+
+    [148] De Lege Agraria, ii., 2: "Meis comitiis non
+    tabellam, vindicem tacitę libertatis, sed vocem vivam
+    prę vobis, indicem vestrarum erga me voluntatum ac
+    studiorum tulistis. Itaque me * * * una voce universus
+    populus Romanus consulem declaravit."
+
+    [149] Sall., Conj. Catilinaria, xxi.: "Petere consulatum
+    C. Antonium, quem sibi collegam fore speraret, hominem
+    et familiarem, et omnibus necessitudinibus
+    circumventum." Sallust would no doubt have put anything
+    into Catiline's mouth which would suit his own purpose;
+    but it was necessary for his purpose that he should
+    confine himself to credibilities.
+
+    [150] Cicero himself tells us that many short-hand
+    writers were sent by him--"Plures librarii," as he calls
+    them--to take down the words of the Agrarian law which
+    Rullus proposed. De Lege Agra., ii., 5. Pliny,
+    Quintilian, and Martial speak of these men as Notarii.
+    Martial explains the nature of their business:
+
+      "Currant verba licet, manus est velocior illis;
+          Nondum lingua suum, dextra peregit opus."--xiv., 208.
+
+    [151]Ad Att., ii., 1. "Oratiunculas," he calls them. It
+    would seem here that he pretends to have preserved these
+    speeches only at the request of some admiring young
+    friends. Demosthenes, of course, was the
+    "fellow-citizen," so called in badinage, because
+    Atticus, deserting Rome, lived much at Athens.
+
+    [152] This speech, which has been lost, was addressed to
+    the people with the view of reconciling them to a law in
+    accordance with which the Equites were entitled to
+    special seats in the theatre. It was altogether
+    successful.
+
+    [153] This, which is extant, was spoken in defence of an
+    old man who was accused of a political homicide
+    thirty-seven years before--of having killed, that is,
+    Saturninus the Tribune. Cicero was unsuccessful, but
+    Rabirius was saved by the common subterfuge of an
+    interposition of omens. There are some very fine
+    passages in this oration.
+
+    [154] This has been lost. Cicero, though he acknowledged
+    the iniquity of Sulla's proscriptions, showed that their
+    effects could not now be reversed without further
+    revolutions. He gained his point on this occasion.
+
+    [155] This has been lost. Cicero, in accordance with the
+    practice of the time, was entitled to the government of
+    a province when ceasing to be Consul. The rich province
+    of Macedonia fell to him by lot, but he made it over to
+    his colleague Antony, thus purchasing, if not Antony's
+    co-operation, at any rate his quiescence, in regard to
+    Catiline. He also made over the province of Gaul, which
+    then fell to his lot, to Metellus, not wishing to leave
+    the city. All this had to be explained to the people.
+
+    [156] It will be seen that he also defended Rabirius in
+    his consular year, but had thought fit to include that
+    among his consular speeches. Some doubt has been thrown,
+    especially by Mr. Tyrrell, on the genuineness of
+    Cicero's letter giving the list of his "oratiunculas
+    consulares," because the speeches Pro Murena and Pro
+    Pisone are omitted, and as containing some "rather
+    un-Ciceronian expressions." My respect for Mr. Tyrrell's
+    scholarship and judgment is so great that I hardly dare
+    to express an opinion contrary to his; but I should be
+    sorry to exclude a letter so Ciceronian in its feeling.
+    And if we are to have liberty to exclude without
+    evidence, where are we to stop?
+
+    [157] Corn. Nepo., Epaminondas, I.: "We know that with
+    us" (Romans) "music is foreign to the employments of a
+    great man. To dance would amount to a vice. But these
+    things among the Greeks are not only pleasant but
+    praiseworthy."
+
+    [158] Conj. Catilinaria, xxv.
+
+    [159] Horace, Epis. i., xvii.:
+
+           "Si sciret regibus uti
+       Fastidiret olus qui me notat."
+
+    [160] Pro Murena, xxix.
+
+    [161] Pro Murena, x. This Sulpicius was afterward Consul
+    with M. Marcellus, and in the days of the Philippics was
+    sent as one of a deputation to Antony. He died while on
+    the journey. He is said to have been a man of excellent
+    character, and a thorough-going conservative.
+
+    [162] Pro Murena, xi.
+
+    [163] Ibid., xi.
+
+    [164] Ibid., xii.
+
+    [165] Ibid., xiii.
+
+    [166] Ibid., xi.
+
+    [167] Pro Cluentio, 1.
+
+    [168] De Lege Agraria, ii., 5.
+
+    [169] He alludes here to his own colleague Antony, whom
+    through his whole year of office he had to watch lest
+    the second Consul should join the enemies whom he
+    fears--should support Rullus or go over to Catiline.
+    With this view, choosing the lesser of the two evils, he
+    bribes Antony with the government of Macedonia.
+
+    [170] De Lege Agraria, i., 7 and 8.
+
+    [171] The "jus imaginis" belonged to those whose
+    ancestors was counted an Ędile, a Prętor, or a Consul.
+    The descendants of such officers were entitled to have
+    these images, whether in bronze, or marble, or wax,
+    carried at the funerals of their friends.
+
+    [172] Forty years since, Marius who was also "novus
+    homo," and also, singularly enough, from Arpinum, had
+    been made Consul, but not with the glorious
+    circumstances as now detailed by Cicero.
+
+    [173] De Lege Agraria, ii., 1, 2, and 3.
+
+    [174] See Introduction.
+
+    [175] Pliny the elder, Hist. Nat., lib. vii., ca. xxxi.
+
+    [176] The word is "proscripsisti," "you proscribed him."
+    For the proper understanding of this, the bearing of
+    Cicero toward Antony during the whole period of the
+    Philippics must be considered.
+
+    [177] Catiline, by Mr. Beesly. Fortnightly Review, 1865.
+
+    [178] Pro Murena, xxv.: "Quem omnino vivum illinc exire
+    non oportuerat." I think we must conclude from this that
+    Cicero had almost expected that his attack upon the
+    conspirators, in his first Catiline oration, would have
+    the effect of causing him to be killed.
+
+    [179] Ęneid, viii., 668:
+
+                     "Te, Catilina, minaci
+            Pendentem scopulo."
+
+    [180] Velleius Paterculus, lib. ii., xxxiv.
+
+    [181] Juvenal, Sat. ii., 27: "Catilina Cethegum!" Could
+    such a one as Catiline answer such a one as Cethegus?
+    Sat. viii., 232: "Arma tamen vos Nocturna et flammas
+    domibus templisque parastis." Catiline, in spite of his
+    noble blood, had endeavored to burn the city. Sat. xiv.,
+    41: "Catilinam quocunque in populo videas." It is hard
+    to find a good man, but it is easy enough to put your
+    hand anywhere on a Catiline.
+
+    [182] Val Maximus, lib. v., viii., 5; lib. ix., 1, 9;
+    lib. ix., xi., 3.
+
+    [183] Florus, lib. iv.
+
+    [184] Mommsen's History of Rome, book v., chap v.
+
+    [185] I feel myself constrained here to allude to the
+    treatment given to Catiline by Dean Merivale in his
+    little work on the two Roman Triumvirates. The Dean's
+    sympathies are very near akin to those of Mr. Beesly,
+    but he values too highly his own historical judgment to
+    allow it to run on all fours with Mr. Beesly's
+    sympathies. "The real designs," he says, "of the
+    infamous Catiline and his associates must indeed always
+    remain shrouded in mystery. * * * Nevertheless, it is
+    impossible to deny, and on the whole it would be
+    unreasonable to doubt, that such a conspiracy there
+    really was, and that the very existence of the
+    commonwealth was for a moment seriously imperilled." It
+    would certainly be unreasonable to doubt it. But the
+    Dean, though he calls Catiline infamous, and
+    acknowledges the conspiracy, nevertheless give us ample
+    proof of his sympathy with the conspirators, or rather
+    of his strong feeling against Cicero. Speaking of
+    Catiline at a certain moment, he says that he "was not
+    yet hunted down." He speaks of the "upstart Cicero," and
+    plainly shows us that his heart is with the side which
+    had been Cęsar's. Whether conspiracy or no conspiracy,
+    whether with or without wholesale murder and rapine, a
+    single master with a strong hand was the one remedy
+    needed for Rome! The reader must understand that
+    Cicero's one object in public life was to resist that
+    lesson.
+
+    [186] Asconius, "In toga candida," reports that
+    Fenestella, a writer of the time of Augustus, had
+    declared that Cicero had defended Catiline; but Asconius
+    gives his reasons for disbelieving the story.
+
+    [187] Cicero, however, declares that he has made a
+    difference between traitors to their country and other
+    criminals. Pro P. Sulla, ca. iii.: "Verum etiam quędam
+    contagio sceleris, si defendas eum, quem obstrictum esse
+    patrię parricidio suspicere." Further on in the same
+    oration, ca. vi., he explains that he had refused to
+    defend Autronius because he had known Autronius to be a
+    conspirator against his country. I cannot admit the
+    truth of the argument in which Mr. Forsyth defends the
+    practice of the English bar in this respect, and in
+    doing so presses hard upon Cicero. "At Rome," he says,
+    "it was different. The advocate there was conceived to
+    have a much wider discretion than we allow." Neither in
+    Rome nor in England has the advocate been held to be
+    disgraced by undertaking the defence of bad men who have
+    been notoriously guilty. What an English barrister may
+    do, there was no reason that a Roman advocate should not
+    do, in regard to simple criminality. Cicero himself has
+    explained in the passage I have quoted how the Roman
+    practice did differ from ours in regard to treason. He
+    has stated also that he knew nothing of the first
+    conspiracy when he offered to defend Catiline on the
+    score of provincial peculations. No writer has been
+    heavy on Hortensius for defending Verres, but only
+    because he took bribes from Verres.
+
+    [188] Publius Cornelius Sulla, and Publius Autronius
+    P[oe]tus.
+
+    [189] Pro P. Sulla, iv. He declares that he had known
+    nothing of the first conspiracy and gives the reason:
+    "Quod nondum penitus in republica versabar, quod nondum
+    ad propositum mihi finem honoris perveneram, quod mea me
+    ambitio et forensis labor ab omni illa cogitatione
+    abstrahebat."
+
+    [190] Sallust, Catilinaria, xviii.
+
+    [191] Livy, Epitome, lib. ci.
+
+    [192] Suetonius, J. Cęsar, ix.
+
+    [193] Mommsen, book v., ca. v., says of Cęsar and
+    Crassus as to this period, "that this notorious action
+    corresponds with striking exactness to the secret action
+    which this report ascribes to them." By which he means
+    to imply that they probably were concerned in the plot.
+
+    [194] Sallust tells us, Catilinaria, xlix., that Cicero
+    was instigated by special enemies of Cęsar to include
+    Cęsar in the accusation, but refused to mix himself up
+    in so great a crime. Crassus also was accused, but
+    probably wrongfully. Sallust declares that an attempt
+    was made to murder Cęsar as he left the Senate. There
+    was probably some quarrel and hustling, but no more.
+
+    [195] Sallust, Catilinaria, xxxvii.: "Omnino cuncta
+    plebes, novarum rerum studio, Catilinę incepta
+    probabat." By the words "novarum rerum studio"--by a love
+    of revolution--we can understand the kind of popularity
+    which Sallust intended to express.
+
+    [196] Pro Murena, xxv.
+
+    [197] "Darent operam consules ne quid detrimenti
+    respublica capiat."
+
+    [198] Catilinaria, xxxi.
+
+    [199] Quintilian, lib. xii., 10: "Quem tamen et suorum
+    homines temporum incessere audebant, ut tumidiorem, et
+    asianum, et redundantem."
+
+    [200] Orator., xxxvii.: "A nobis homo audacissimus
+    Catilina in senatu accusatus obmutuit."
+
+    [201] 2 Catilinaria, xxxi.
+
+    [202] In the first of them to the Senate, chap. ix., he
+    declares this to Catiline himself: "Si mea voce
+    perterritus ire in exsilium animum induxeris, quanta
+    tempestas invidię nobis, si minus in pręsens tempus,
+    recenti memoria scelerum tuorum, at in posteritatem
+    impendeat." He goes on to declare that he will endure
+    all that, if by so doing he can save the Republic. "Sed
+    est mihi tanti; dummodo ista privata sit calamitas, et a
+    reipublicę periculis sejungatur."
+
+    [203] Sallust, Catilinaria, xli.: "Itaque Q. Fabio
+    Sangę cujus patrocinio civitas plurimum utebatur rem
+    omnem uti cognoverant aperiunt."
+
+    [204] Horace, Epo. xvi., 6: "Novisque rebus infidelis
+    Allobrox." The unhappy Savoyard has from this line been
+    known through ages as a conspirator, false even to his
+    fellow-conspirators.
+
+    Juvenal, vii., 214: "Rufum qui toties Ciceronem
+    Allobroga dixit." Some Rufus, acting as advocate, had
+    thought to put down Cicero by calling him an
+    Allobrogian.
+
+    [205] The words in which this honor was conferred he
+    himself repeats: "Quod urbem incendiis, cęde cives,
+    Italiam bello liberassem"--"because I had rescued the
+    city from fire, the citizens from slaughter, and Italy
+    from war."
+
+    [206] It is necessary in all oratory to read something
+    between the lines. It is allowed to the speaker to
+    produce effect by diminishing and exaggerating. I think
+    we should detract something from the praises bestowed on
+    Catiline's military virtues. The bigger Catiline could
+    be made to appear, the greater would be the honor of
+    having driven him out of the city.
+
+    [207] In Catilinam, iii., xi.
+
+    [208] In Catilinam, ibid., xii.: "Ne mihi noceant
+    vestrum est providere."
+
+    [209] "Prince of the Senate" was an honorary title,
+    conferred on some man of mark as a dignity--at this
+    period on some ex-Consul; it conferred no power. Cicero,
+    the Consul who had convened the Senate, called on the
+    speakers as he thought fit.
+
+    [210] Cęsar, according to Sallust, had referred to the
+    Lex Porcia. Cicero alludes, and makes Cęsar allude, to
+    the Lex Sempronia. The Porcian law, as we are told by
+    Livy, was passed B.C. 299, and forbade that a Roman
+    should be scourged or put to death. The Lex Sempronia
+    was introduced by C. Gracchus, and enacted that the life
+    of a citizen should not be taken without the voice of
+    the citizens.
+
+    [211] Velleius Paterculus, xxxvi.: "Consulatui Ciceronis
+    non mediocre adjecit decus natus eo anno Divus
+    Augustus."
+
+    [212] In Pisonem, iii.: "Sine ulla dubitatione juravi
+    rempublicam atque hanc urbem mea unius opera esse
+    salvam."
+
+    [213] Dio Cassius tells the same story, lib. xxxvii.,
+    ca. 38, but he adds that Cicero was more hated than ever
+    because of the oath he took: [Greek: kai ho men kai ek
+    toutou poly mallon emisźthź.]
+
+    [214] It is the only letter given in the collection as
+    having been addressed direct to Pompey. In two letters
+    written some years later to Atticus, B.C. 49, lib.
+    viii., 11, and lib. viii., 12, he sends copies of a
+    correspondence between himself and Pompey and two of the
+    Pompeian generals.
+
+    [215] Lib. v., 7. It is hardly necessary to explain that
+    the younger Scipio and Lęlius were as famous for their
+    friendship as Pylades and Orestes. The "Virtus Scipiadę
+    et mitis sapientia Lęli" have been made famous to us
+    all by Horace.
+
+    [216] These two brothers, neither of whom was remarkable
+    for great qualities, though they were both to be
+    Consuls, were the last known of the great family of the
+    Metelli, a branch of the "Gens Cęcilia." Among them had
+    been many who had achieved great names for themselves in
+    Roman history, on account of the territories added to
+    the springing Roman Empire by their victories. There had
+    been a Macedonicus, a Numidicus, a Balearicus, and a
+    Creticus. It is of the first that Velleius Paterculus
+    sings the glory--lib. i., ca. xi., and the elder Pliny
+    repeats the story, Hist. Nat., vii., 44--that of his
+    having been carried to the grave by four sons, of whom
+    at the time of his death three had been Consuls, one had
+    been a Prętor, two had enjoyed triumphal honors, and
+    one had been Censor. In looking through the consular
+    list of Cicero's lifetime, I find that there were no
+    less than seven taken from the family of the Metelli.
+    These two brothers, Metellus Nepos and Celer, again
+    became friends to Cicero; Nepos, who had stopped his
+    speech and assisted in forcing him into exile, having
+    assisted as Consul in obtaining his recall from exile.
+    It is very difficult to follow the twistings and
+    turnings of Roman friendships at this period.
+
+    [217] Velleius Paterculus, lib. ii., ca. xiv. Paterculus
+    tells us how, when the architect offered to build the
+    house so as to hide its interior from the gaze of the
+    world, Drusus desired the man so to construct it that
+    all the world might see what he was doing.
+
+    [218] It may be worth while to give a translation of the
+    anecdote as told by Aulus Gellius, and to point out that
+    the authors intention was to show what a clever fellow
+    Cicero was. Cicero did defend P. Sulla this year; but
+    whence came the story of the money borrowed from Sulla
+    we do not know. "It is a trick of rhetoric craftily to
+    confess charges made, so as not to come within the reach
+    of the law. So that, if anything base be alleged which
+    cannot be denied, you may turn it aside with a joke, and
+    make it a matter of laughter rather than of disgrace, as
+    it is written that Cicero did when, with a drolling
+    word, he made little of a charge which he could not
+    deny. For when he was anxious to buy a house on the
+    Palatine Hill, and had not the ready money, he quietly
+    borrowed from P. Sulla--who was then about to stand his
+    trial, 'sestertium viciens'--twenty million sesterces.
+    When that became known, before the purchase was made,
+    and it was objected to him that he had borrowed the
+    money from a client, then Cicero, instigated by the
+    unexpected charge, denied the loan, and denied also that
+    he was going to buy the house. But when he had bought it
+    and the fib was thrown in his teeth, he laughed
+    heartily, and asked whether men had so lost their senses
+    as not to be aware that a prudent father of a family
+    would deny an intended purchase rather than raise the
+    price of the article against himself."--Noctes Atticę,
+    xii., 12. Aulus Gellius though he tells us that the
+    story was written, does not tell us where he read it.
+
+    [219] I must say this, "pace" Mr. Tyrrell, who, in his
+    note on the letter to Atticus, lib. i., 12, attempts to
+    show that some bargain for such professional fee had
+    been made. Regarding Mr. Tyrrell as a critic always
+    fair, and almost always satisfactory, I am sorry to have
+    to differ from him; but it seems to me that he, too, has
+    been carried away by the feeling that in defending a
+    man's character it is best to give up some point.
+
+    [220] I have been amused at finding a discourse,
+    eloquent and most enthusiastic, in praise of Cicero and
+    especially of this oration, spoken by M. Guéroult at the
+    College of France in June, 1815. The worst literary
+    faults laid to the charge of Cicero, if committed by
+    him--which M. Guéroult thinks to be doubtful--had been
+    committed even by Voltaire and Racine! The learned
+    Frenchman, with whom I altogether sympathize, rises to
+    an ecstasy of violent admiration, and this at the very
+    moment in which Waterloo was being fought. But in truth
+    the great doings of the world do not much affect
+    individual life. We should play our whist at the clubs
+    though the battle of Dorking were being fought.
+
+    [221] Pro P. Sulla, iv.: "Scis me * * * illorum expertem
+    temporum et sermonum fuisse; credo, quod nondum penitus
+    in republica versabar, quod nondum ad propositum mihi
+    finem honoris perveneram. * * * Quis ergo intererat vestris
+    consiliis? Omnes hi, quos vides huic adesse et in primis
+    Q. Hortensius."
+
+    [222] Ad Att., lib. i., 12.
+
+    [223] Ad Att., lib. i., 13.
+
+    [224] Ibid., i., 14.
+
+    [225]Ibid., i., 16: "Vis scire quomodo minus quam soleam
+    pręliatus sum."
+
+    [226] "You have bought a fine house," said Clodius.
+    "There would be more in what you say if you could accuse
+    me of buying judges," replied Cicero. "The judges would
+    not trust you on your oath," said Clodius, referring to
+    the alibi by which he had escaped in opposition to
+    Cicero's oath. "Yes," replied Cicero, "twenty-five
+    trusted me; but not one of the thirty-one would trust
+    you without having his bribe paid beforehand."
+
+    [227] Ad Att., i., 14: "Proxime Pompeium sedebam.
+    Intellexi hominem moveri."
+
+    [228] Ibid.: "Quo modo [Greek: eneperpereusamźn], novo
+    auditori Pompeio."
+
+    [229] Mommsen, book v., chap. vi. This probably has been
+    taken from the statement of Paterculus, lib. ii., 40:
+    "Quippe plerique non sine exercitu venturum in urbem
+    adfirmabant, et libertati publicę statuturum arbitrio
+    suo modum. Quo magis hoc homines timuerant, eo gratior
+    civilis tanti imperatoris reditus fuit." No doubt there
+    was a dread among many of Pompey coming back as Sulla
+    had come: not from indications to be found in the
+    character of Pompey, but because Sulla had done so.
+
+    [230] Florus, lib. ii., xix. Having described to us the
+    siege of Numantia, he goes on "Hactenus populus Romanus
+    pulcher, egregius, pius, sanctus atque magnificus.
+    Reliqua seculi, ut grandia ęque, ita vel magis turbida
+    et f[oe]da."
+
+    [231] We have not Pollio's poem on the conspiracy, but
+    we have Horace's record of Pollio's poem:
+
+       Motum ex Metello consule civicum,
+       Bellique causas et vitia, et modos,
+         Ludumque Fortunę, gravesque
+           Principum amicitias, et arma
+       Nondum expiatis uncta cruoribus,
+       Periculosę plenum opus aleę,
+         Tractas, et incedis per ignes
+           Suppositos cineri doloso.--Odes, lib. ii., 1.
+
+    [232] The German index appeared--very much after the
+    original work--as late as 1875.
+
+    [233] Mommsen, lib. v., chap. vi. I cannot admit that
+    Mommsen is strictly accurate, as Cęsar had no real
+    idea of democracy. He desired to be the Head of
+    the Oligarchs, and, as such, to ingratiate himself
+    with the people.
+
+    [234] For the character of Cęsar generally I would refer
+    readers to Suetonius, whose life of the great man
+    is, to my thinking, more graphic than any that has
+    been written since. For his anecdotes there is
+    little or no evidence. His facts are not all
+    historical. His knowledge was very much less
+    accurate than that of modern writers who have had
+    the benefit of research and comparison. But there
+    was enough of history, of biography, and of
+    tradition to enable him to form a true idea of the
+    man. He himself as a narrator was neither
+    specially friendly nor specially hostile. He has
+    told what was believed at the time, and he has
+    drawn a character that agrees perfectly with all
+    that we have learned since.
+
+    [235] By no one has the character and object of the
+    Triumvirate been so well described as by Lucan, who,
+    bombastic as he is, still manages to bring home to the
+    reader the ideas as to persons and events which he
+    wishes to convey. I have ventured to give in an
+    Appendix, E, the passages referred to, with such a
+    translation in prose as I have been able to produce. It
+    will be found at the end of this volume.
+
+    [236] Plutarch--Crassus: [Greek: kai synestźsen ek tōn
+    triōn ischyn amachon.]
+
+    [237] Velleius Paterculus, lib. ii., 44: "Hoc igitur
+    consule, inter eum et Cn. Pompeium et M. Crassum inita
+    potentię societas, quę urbi orbique terrarum, nec
+    minus diverso quoque tempore ipsis exitiabilis fuit."
+    Suetonius, Julius Cęsar, xix., "Societatem cum utroque
+    iniit." Officers called Triumviri were quite common, as
+    were Quinqueviri and Decemviri. Livy speaks of a
+    "Triumviratus"--or rather two such offices exercised by
+    one man--ix., 46. We remember, too, that wretch whom
+    Horace gibbeted, Epod. iv.: "Sectus flagellis hic
+    triumviralibus." But the word, though in common use, was
+    not applied to this conspiracy.
+
+    [238] Ad Att., lib. ii., 3: "Is affirmabat, illum omnibus
+    in rebus meo et Pompeii consilio usurum, daturumque
+    operam, ut cum Pompeio Crassum conjungeret. Hic sunt
+    hęc. Conjunctio mihi summa cum Pompeio; si placet etiam
+    cum Cęsare; reditus in gratiam cum inimicis, pax cum
+    multitudine; senectulis otium. Sed me [Greek: katakleis]
+    mea illa commovet, quę est in libro iii.
+
+      "Interea cursus, quos prima a parte juventę
+       Quosque adeo consul virtute, animoque petisti,
+       Hos retine, atque, auge famam laudesque bonorum."
+
+    [239] Homer, Iliad, lib. xii., 243: [Greek: Eis oiōnos
+    aristos amynesthai peri patrźs.]
+
+    [240] Middleton's Life of Cicero, vol. i., p. 291.
+
+    [241] Pro Domo Sua, xvi. This was an oration, as the
+    reader will soon learn more at length, in which the
+    orator pleaded for the restoration of his town mansion
+    after his return from exile. It has, however, been
+    doubted whether the speech as we have it was ever made
+    by Cicero.
+
+    [242] Suetonius, Julius Cęsar, xx.
+
+    [243] Ad Att., lib. ii., 1: "Quid quęris?" says Cicero.
+    "Conturbavi Gręcam nationem"--"I have put all Greece
+    into a flutter."
+
+    [244] De Divinatione, lib. i.
+
+    [245] Ad Quin. Fratrem, lib. i., 1: "Non itineribus tuis
+    perterreri homines? non sumptu exhauriri? non adventu
+    commoveri? Esse, quocumque veneris, et publice et
+    privatim maximam lętitiam; quum urbs custodem non
+    tyrannum; domus hospitem non expilatorem, recipisse
+    videatur? His autem in rebus jam te usus ipse profecto
+    erudivit nequaquam satis esse, ipsum hasce habere
+    virtutis, sed esse circumspiciendum diligentur, ut in
+    hac custodia provincię non te unum, sed omnes ministros
+    imperii tui, sociis, et civibus, et reipublicę
+    pręstare videare."
+
+    [246] Ad Quin. Fratrem, lib. i., 1: "Ac mihi quidem
+    videntur huc omnia esse referenda iis qui pręsunt
+    aliis; ut ii, qui erunt eorum in imperio sint quam
+    beatissimi, quod tibi et esse antiquissimum et ab initio
+    fuisse, ut primum Asiam attigisti, constante fama atque
+    omnium sermone celebratum est. Est autem non modo ejus,
+    qui sociis et civibus, sed etiam ejus qui servis, qui
+    mutis pecudibus pręsit, eorum quibus pręsit commodis
+    utilitatique servire."
+
+    [247] "Hęc est una in toto imperio tuo difficultas."
+
+    [248] Mommsen, book v., ca. 6.
+
+    [249] Mommsen, vol. v., ca. vi.
+
+    [250] Ad Att., lib. ii., 7: "Atque hęc, sin velim
+    existimes, non me abs te [Greek: kata to praktikon]
+    quęrere, quod gestiat animus aliquid agere in
+    republica. Jam pridem gubernare me tędebat, etiam quum
+    licebat."
+
+    [251] Ad Att., lib. ii., 8: "Scito Curionem adolescentem
+    venisse ad me salutatum. Valde ejus sermo de Publio cum
+    tuis litteris congruebat, ipse vero mirandum in modum
+    Reges odisse superbos. Peręque narrabat incensam esse
+    juventutem, neque ferre hęc posse." The "reges
+    superbos" were Cęsar and Pompey.
+
+    [252] Ad Att., lib. ii., 5: [Greek: Aideomai Trōas kai
+    Trōadas helkesipeplous].--Il., vi., 442. "I fear what
+    Mrs. Grundy would say of me," is Mr. Tyrrell's homely
+    version. Cicero's mind soared, I think, higher when he
+    brought the words of Hector to his service than does the
+    ordinary reference to our old familiar critic.
+
+    [253] Quint., xii., 1.
+
+    [254] Enc. Britannica on Cicero.
+
+    [255] Ad Att., lib. ii., 9.
+
+    [256] Ibid.: "Festive, mihi crede, et minore sonitu,
+    quam putaram, orbis hic in republica est conversus."
+    "Orbis hic," this round body of three is the
+    Triumvirate.
+
+    [257] We cannot but think of the threat Horace made,
+    Sat., lib. ii., 1:
+
+                                "At ille
+      Qui me commorit, melius non tangere! clamo,
+      Flebit, et insignis tota cantabitur urbe."
+
+    [258] Ad Att., lib. ii., 11: "Da ponderosam aliquam
+    epistolam."
+
+    [259] Josephus, lib. xviii., ca. 5.
+
+    [260] Ad Att., lib. ii., 16.
+
+    [261] Ad Att., lib. ii., 18: "A Cęsare valde liberaliter
+    invitor in legationem illam, sibi ut sim legatus; atque
+    etiam libera legatio voti causa datur."
+
+    [262] De Legibus, lib. iii., ca. viii.: "Jam illud apertum
+    prefecto est nihil esse turpius, quam quenquam legari
+    nisi republica causa."
+
+    [263] It may be seen from this how anxious Cęsar was to
+    secure his silence, and yet how determined not to screen
+    him unless he could secure his silence.
+
+    [264] Ad Quintum, lib. i., 2.
+
+    [265] Of this last sentence I have taken a translation
+    given by Mr. Tyrrell, who has introduced a special
+    reading of the original which the sense seems to
+    justify.
+
+    [266] Macrobius, Saturnalia, lib. ii., ca. i.: We are told
+    that Cicero had been called the consular buffoon. "And
+    I," says Macrobius, "if it would not be too long, could
+    relate how by his jokes he has brought off the most
+    guilty criminals." Then he tells the story of Lucius
+    Flaccus.
+
+    [267] See the evidence of Asconius on this point, as to
+    which Cicero's conduct has been much mistaken. We shall
+    come to Milo's trial before long.
+
+    [268] The statement is made by Mr. Tyrrell in his
+    biographical introduction to the Epistles.
+
+    [269] The 600 years, or anni DC., is used to signify
+    unlimited futurity.
+
+    [270] Mommsen's History, book v., ca. v.
+
+    [271] [Greek: Automalos ōnomazeto] is the phrase of
+    Dio Cassius. "Levissume transfuga" is the translation
+    made by the author of the "Declamatio in Ciceronem." If
+    I might venture on a slang phrase, I should say that
+    [Greek: automalos] was a man who "went off on his own
+    hook." But no man was ever more loyal as a political
+    adherent than Cicero.
+
+    [272] Ad Att., ii., 25.
+
+    [273] We do not know when the marriage took place, or
+    any of the circumstances; but we are aware that when
+    Tullia came, in the following year, B.C. 57, to meet her
+    father at Brundisium, she was a widow.
+
+    [274] Suetonius, Julius Cęsar, xii.: "Subornavit etiam
+    qui C. Rabirio perduellionis diem diceret."
+
+    [275] "Qui civem Romanum indemnatum perimisset, ei aqua
+    at igni interdiceretur."
+
+    [276] Plutarch tells us of this sobriquet, but gives
+    another reason for it, equally injurious to the lady's
+    reputation.
+
+    [277] Ad Att., lib. iii., 15.
+
+    [278] In Pisonem, vi.
+
+    [279] Ad Att., lib. x., 4.
+
+    [280] We are told by Cornelius Nepos, in his life of
+    Atticus, that when Cicero fled from his country Atticus
+    advanced to him two hundred and fifty sesterces, or
+    about £2000. I doubt, however, whether the flight here
+    referred to was not that early visit to Athens which
+    Cicero was supposed to have made in his fear of Sulla.
+
+    [281] Ad Fam., lib. xiv., iv.: "Tullius to his Terentia,
+    and to his young Tullia, and to his Cicero," meaning his
+    boy.
+
+    [282] Pro Domo Sua, xxiv.
+
+    [283] Ad Quin. Fra., 1, 3.
+
+    [284] The reader who wishes to understand with what
+    anarchy the largest city in the world might still exist,
+    should turn to chapter viii. of book v. of Mommsen's
+    History.
+
+    [285] Ad Att., lib. iii., 12.
+
+    [286] Horace, Epis., lib. ii., 1.
+
+    [287] Ad Att., lib. i., 8.
+
+    [288] Horace, Epis., lib. ii., 11. The translation is
+    Conington's.
+
+    [289] Vell. Pat., lib. i., xiii.
+
+    [290] "Civile;" when Sulla, with Pompey under him, was
+    fighting with young Marius and Cinna.
+
+    [291] "Africanum;" when he had fought with Domitius, the
+    son-in-law of Cinna, and with Hiarbas.
+
+    [292] "Transalpinum;" during his march through Gaul into
+    Spain.
+
+    [293] "Hispaniense;" in which he conquered Sertorius.
+
+    [294] "Servile;" the war with Spartacus, with the slaves
+    and gladiators.
+
+    [295] "Navale Bellum;" the war with the pirates.
+
+    [296] For the full understanding of this oft-quoted line
+    the reader should make himself acquainted with Cato's
+    march across Libya after the death of Pompey, as told by
+    Lucan in his 9th book.
+
+
+END OF VOLUME I.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Life of Cicero, by Anthony Trollope
+
+*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LIFE OF CICERO ***
+
+***** This file should be named 8945-8.txt or 8945-8.zip *****
+This and all associated files of various formats will be found in:
+        http://www.gutenberg.org/8/9/4/8945/
+
+Produced by Ted Garvin, Marc D'Hooghe, Steve Whitaker, and
+the PG Online Distributed Proofreading Team
+
+
+Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions
+will be renamed.
+
+Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no
+one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation
+(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without
+permission and without paying copyright royalties.  Special rules,
+set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to
+copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to
+protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark.  Project
+Gutenberg is a registered trademark, and may not be used if you
+charge for the eBooks, unless you receive specific permission.  If you
+do not charge anything for copies of this eBook, complying with the
+rules is very easy.  You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose
+such as creation of derivative works, reports, performances and
+research.  They may be modified and printed and given away--you may do
+practically ANYTHING with public domain eBooks.  Redistribution is
+subject to the trademark license, especially commercial
+redistribution.
+
+
+
+*** START: FULL LICENSE ***
+
+THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE
+PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK
+
+To protect the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting the free
+distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work
+(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase "Project
+Gutenberg"), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full Project
+Gutenberg-tm License (available with this file or online at
+http://gutenberg.org/license).
+
+
+Section 1.  General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic works
+
+1.A.  By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to
+and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property
+(trademark/copyright) agreement.  If you do not agree to abide by all
+the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or destroy
+all copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in your possession.
+If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic work and you do not agree to be bound by the
+terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the person or
+entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph 1.E.8.
+
+1.B.  "Project Gutenberg" is a registered trademark.  It may only be
+used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who
+agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement.  There are a few
+things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works
+even without complying with the full terms of this agreement.  See
+paragraph 1.C below.  There are a lot of things you can do with Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic works if you follow the terms of this agreement
+and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works.  See paragraph 1.E below.
+
+1.C.  The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation ("the Foundation"
+or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection of Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic works.  Nearly all the individual works in the
+collection are in the public domain in the United States.  If an
+individual work is in the public domain in the United States and you are
+located in the United States, we do not claim a right to prevent you from
+copying, distributing, performing, displaying or creating derivative
+works based on the work as long as all references to Project Gutenberg
+are removed.  Of course, we hope that you will support the Project
+Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting free access to electronic works by
+freely sharing Project Gutenberg-tm works in compliance with the terms of
+this agreement for keeping the Project Gutenberg-tm name associated with
+the work.  You can easily comply with the terms of this agreement by
+keeping this work in the same format with its attached full Project
+Gutenberg-tm License when you share it without charge with others.
+
+1.D.  The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern
+what you can do with this work.  Copyright laws in most countries are in
+a constant state of change.  If you are outside the United States, check
+the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this agreement
+before downloading, copying, displaying, performing, distributing or
+creating derivative works based on this work or any other Project
+Gutenberg-tm work.  The Foundation makes no representations concerning
+the copyright status of any work in any country outside the United
+States.
+
+1.E.  Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg:
+
+1.E.1.  The following sentence, with active links to, or other immediate
+access to, the full Project Gutenberg-tm License must appear prominently
+whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg-tm work (any work on which the
+phrase "Project Gutenberg" appears, or with which the phrase "Project
+Gutenberg" is associated) is accessed, displayed, performed, viewed,
+copied or distributed:
+
+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
+
+1.E.2.  If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is derived
+from the public domain (does not contain a notice indicating that it is
+posted with permission of the copyright holder), the work can be copied
+and distributed to anyone in the United States without paying any fees
+or charges.  If you are redistributing or providing access to a work
+with the phrase "Project Gutenberg" associated with or appearing on the
+work, you must comply either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1
+through 1.E.7 or obtain permission for the use of the work and the
+Project Gutenberg-tm trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or
+1.E.9.
+
+1.E.3.  If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is posted
+with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution
+must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any additional
+terms imposed by the copyright holder.  Additional terms will be linked
+to the Project Gutenberg-tm License for all works posted with the
+permission of the copyright holder found at the beginning of this work.
+
+1.E.4.  Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this
+work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg-tm.
+
+1.E.5.  Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this
+electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without
+prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with
+active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project
+Gutenberg-tm License.
+
+1.E.6.  You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary,
+compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including any
+word processing or hypertext form.  However, if you provide access to or
+distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg-tm work in a format other than
+"Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other format used in the official version
+posted on the official Project Gutenberg-tm web site (www.gutenberg.org),
+you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense to the user, provide a
+copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means of obtaining a copy upon
+request, of the work in its original "Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other
+form.  Any alternate format must include the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1.
+
+1.E.7.  Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying,
+performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg-tm works
+unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9.
+
+1.E.8.  You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing
+access to or distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works provided
+that
+
+- You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from
+     the use of Project Gutenberg-tm works calculated using the method
+     you already use to calculate your applicable taxes.  The fee is
+     owed to the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark, but he
+     has agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the
+     Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation.  Royalty payments
+     must be paid within 60 days following each date on which you
+     prepare (or are legally required to prepare) your periodic tax
+     returns.  Royalty payments should be clearly marked as such and
+     sent to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the
+     address specified in Section 4, "Information about donations to
+     the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation."
+
+- You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies
+     you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he
+     does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+     License.  You must require such a user to return or
+     destroy all copies of the works possessed in a physical medium
+     and discontinue all use of and all access to other copies of
+     Project Gutenberg-tm works.
+
+- You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of any
+     money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the
+     electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days
+     of receipt of the work.
+
+- You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free
+     distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm works.
+
+1.E.9.  If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic work or group of works on different terms than are set
+forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing from
+both the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and Michael
+Hart, the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark.  Contact the
+Foundation as set forth in Section 3 below.
+
+1.F.
+
+1.F.1.  Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable
+effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread
+public domain works in creating the Project Gutenberg-tm
+collection.  Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may contain
+"Defects," such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate or
+corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other intellectual
+property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or other medium, a
+computer virus, or computer codes that damage or cannot be read by
+your equipment.
+
+1.F.2.  LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the "Right
+of Replacement or Refund" described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project
+Gutenberg-tm trademark, and any other party distributing a Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all
+liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal
+fees.  YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT
+LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE
+PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH F3.  YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE
+TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE
+LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR
+INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH
+DAMAGE.
+
+1.F.3.  LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a
+defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can
+receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a
+written explanation to the person you received the work from.  If you
+received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium with
+your written explanation.  The person or entity that provided you with
+the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in lieu of a
+refund.  If you received the work electronically, the person or entity
+providing it to you may choose to give you a second opportunity to
+receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund.  If the second copy
+is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing without further
+opportunities to fix the problem.
+
+1.F.4.  Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth
+in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you 'AS-IS' WITH NO OTHER
+WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO
+WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTIBILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE.
+
+1.F.5.  Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied
+warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of damages.
+If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement violates the
+law of the state applicable to this agreement, the agreement shall be
+interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or limitation permitted by
+the applicable state law.  The invalidity or unenforceability of any
+provision of this agreement shall not void the remaining provisions.
+
+1.F.6.  INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the
+trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone
+providing copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in accordance
+with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the production,
+promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works,
+harmless from all liability, costs and expenses, including legal fees,
+that arise directly or indirectly from any of the following which you do
+or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this or any Project Gutenberg-tm
+work, (b) alteration, modification, or additions or deletions to any
+Project Gutenberg-tm work, and (c) any Defect you cause.
+
+
+Section  2.  Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg-tm
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm is synonymous with the free distribution of
+electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of computers
+including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers.  It exists
+because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations from
+people in all walks of life.
+
+Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the
+assistance they need, are critical to reaching Project Gutenberg-tm's
+goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg-tm collection will
+remain freely available for generations to come.  In 2001, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure
+and permanent future for Project Gutenberg-tm and future generations.
+To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation
+and how your efforts and donations can help, see Sections 3 and 4
+and the Foundation web page at http://www.pglaf.org.
+
+
+Section 3.  Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive
+Foundation
+
+The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non profit
+501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the
+state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal
+Revenue Service.  The Foundation's EIN or federal tax identification
+number is 64-6221541.  Its 501(c)(3) letter is posted at
+http://pglaf.org/fundraising.  Contributions to the Project Gutenberg
+Literary Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent
+permitted by U.S. federal laws and your state's laws.
+
+The Foundation's principal office is located at 4557 Melan Dr. S.
+Fairbanks, AK, 99712., but its volunteers and employees are scattered
+throughout numerous locations.  Its business office is located at
+809 North 1500 West, Salt Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887, email
+business@pglaf.org.  Email contact links and up to date contact
+information can be found at the Foundation's web site and official
+page at http://pglaf.org
+
+For additional contact information:
+     Dr. Gregory B. Newby
+     Chief Executive and Director
+     gbnewby@pglaf.org
+
+
+Section 4.  Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg
+Literary Archive Foundation
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm depends upon and cannot survive without wide
+spread public support and donations to carry out its mission of
+increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be
+freely distributed in machine readable form accessible by the widest
+array of equipment including outdated equipment.  Many small donations
+($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt
+status with the IRS.
+
+The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating
+charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United
+States.  Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a
+considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up
+with these requirements.  We do not solicit donations in locations
+where we have not received written confirmation of compliance.  To
+SEND DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any
+particular state visit http://pglaf.org
+
+While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we
+have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition
+against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who
+approach us with offers to donate.
+
+International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make
+any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from
+outside the United States.  U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff.
+
+Please check the Project Gutenberg Web pages for current donation
+methods and addresses.  Donations are accepted in a number of other
+ways including checks, online payments and credit card donations.
+To donate, please visit: http://pglaf.org/donate
+
+
+Section 5.  General Information About Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works.
+
+Professor Michael S. Hart is the originator of the Project Gutenberg-tm
+concept of a library of electronic works that could be freely shared
+with anyone.  For thirty years, he produced and distributed Project
+Gutenberg-tm eBooks with only a loose network of volunteer support.
+
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks are often created from several printed
+editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the U.S.
+unless a copyright notice is included.  Thus, we do not necessarily
+keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition.
+
+
+Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search facility:
+
+     http://www.gutenberg.org
+
+This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm,
+including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary
+Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to
+subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks.
diff --git a/8945-8.zip b/8945-8.zip
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..88b7ea6
--- /dev/null
+++ b/8945-8.zip
diff --git a/8945-h.zip b/8945-h.zip
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ca465d4
--- /dev/null
+++ b/8945-h.zip
diff --git a/8945-h/8945-h.htm b/8945-h/8945-h.htm
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7a31972
--- /dev/null
+++ b/8945-h/8945-h.htm
@@ -0,0 +1,14812 @@
+<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN"
+"http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd">
+<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
+<head>
+<meta name="generator" content="HTML Tidy, see www.w3.org" />
+<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content=
+"text/html;charset=utf-8" />
+<title>Life of Cicero by Antony Trollope.</title>
+<style type="text/css">
+
+    p {  margin-top: .75em;
+         text-align: justify;
+         margin-bottom: .75em;}
+
+    p.indent {  margin-top: 0em; text-indent: -1em;
+         text-align: left; margin-left: 1em;
+         margin-bottom: .5em;}
+
+    p.pn {  margin-top: 0em; margin-bottom: .5em; text-align: right;}
+
+
+    h1,h2,h3,h4,h5 {
+         text-align: center; font-weight: normal; /* all headings centered */
+         clear: both;
+         }
+
+    hr { width: 33%;
+     margin-top: 2em;
+     margin-bottom: 2em;
+         margin-left: auto;
+         margin-right: auto;
+         clear: both;
+       }
+
+
+    table {margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;}
+
+    td.left_90 {vertical-align: top; width: 90%; text-align: left;
+    }
+    td.right_10 {vertical-align: bottom; width: 10%; text-align: right;
+    }
+    td.center_100 {vertical-align: top; width: 100%; text-align: center;
+    }
+    td.left_50   { vertical-align: top; width: 50%; text-align: left;}
+
+    body        {margin-left: 10%; margin-right: 10%;}
+
+    .pagenum  { /* uncomment the next line for invisible page numbers */
+            /*  visibility: hidden;  */
+                position: absolute;
+                left: 94%;
+                font-size: .8em;
+                text-align: left;
+              } /* page numbers .8em */
+
+    .sidenote {width: 15%; padding-bottom: .01em; padding-top: .1em;
+               padding-left: .5em; padding-right: .1em; margin-left: .5em;
+               float: right; clear: right; margin-top: .2em;
+               font-size: smaller; }
+
+    .center   {text-align: center; margin-top: 1.5em;}
+
+    .smcap    {font-variant: small-caps;}
+    .u        {text-decoration: underline;}
+
+     small {font-size: .7em;}
+
+    .footnote         {margin-left: 12%; margin-right: 10%; font-size: 0.8em;}
+    .footnote .label  {position: absolute; right: 83%; text-align: right; font-size: .8em;}
+    .fnanchor         {vertical-align: super; font-size: .6em; text-decoration: none;}
+
+    .poem             {margin-left: 10%; margin-right: 10%; text-align: left; font-size: .9em;}
+    .poem2             {margin-left: 0%; margin-right: 0%; text-align: left; font-size: 1em;}
+
+    .poem br          {display: none;}
+    .poem .stanza     {margin: 0em 0em 0em 0em;}
+    .poem span.i05    {display: block; margin-left: -0.5em; padding-left: 3em; text-indent: -3em;}
+    .poem2 span.i0     {display: block; margin-left: 0em; padding-left: 3em; text-indent: -3em;}
+    .poem2 span.i4     {display: block; margin-left: 4em; padding-left: 3em; text-indent: -3em;}
+
+    .poem span.i0     {display: block; margin-left: 0em; padding-left: 3em; text-indent: -3em;}
+    .poem span.i00    {display: block; margin-left:-2em; padding-left: 3em; text-indent: -3em;}
+
+    .poem span.i3     {display: block; margin-left: 3em; padding-left: 3em; text-indent: -3em;}
+    .poem span.i4     {display: block; margin-left: 4em; padding-left: 3em; text-indent: -3em;}
+    .poem span.i5     {display: block; margin-left: 5em; padding-left: 3em; text-indent: -3em;}
+    .poem span.i6     {display: block; margin-left: 6em; padding-left: 3em; text-indent: -3em;}
+    .poem span.i10    {display: block; margin-left: 10em; padding-left: 3em; text-indent: -3em;}
+
+
+
+</style>
+</head>
+<body>
+
+
+<pre>
+
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Life of Cicero, by Anthony Trollope
+
+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: Life of Cicero
+       Volume One
+
+Author: Anthony Trollope
+
+Release Date: August 28, 2003 [EBook #8945]
+HTML version posted: April 30, 2009
+Most recently updated: April 18, 2011
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LIFE OF CICERO ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Ted Garvin, Marc D'Hooghe, Steve Whitaker, and
+the PG Online Distributed Proofreading Team
+
+
+
+
+
+
+</pre>
+
+<h3>THE</h3>
+
+<h1>LIFE OF CICERO</h1>
+
+<h5>BY</h5>
+
+<h3>ANTHONY TROLLOPE</h3>
+
+<h4><i>IN TWO VOLUMES</i><br />
+ <span class="smcap">Vol. I.</span></h4>
+
+
+<h5>NEW YORK<br />
+<small>HARPER AND BROTHERS, FRANKLIN SQUARE</small><br />
+ 1881</h5>
+
+<hr />
+<h4>CONTENTS OF VOLUME I.</h4>
+
+<hr />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_5" id="Page_5">
+5</a></span></p>
+
+
+<table width="100%" summary="TOC">
+<tr>
+<td class="left_90">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="rihht_10"><small>PAGE</small></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="center_100">CHAPTER I.</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="left_90">
+<p class="indent"><span class="smcap">Introduction.</span></p>
+</td>
+<td class="right_10">
+<p class="pn"><a href="#CHAPTER_I">7</a></p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="center_100">CHAPTER II.</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="left_90">
+<p class="indent"><span class="smcap">His Education.</span></p>
+</td>
+<td class="right_10">
+<p class="pn"><a href="#CHAPTER_II">40</a></p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="center_100">CHAPTER III.</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="left_90">
+<p class="indent"><span class="smcap">The Condition of
+Rome.</span></p>
+</td>
+<td class="right_10">
+<p class="pn"><a href="#CHAPTER_III">62</a></p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="center_100">CHAPTER IV.</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="left_90">
+<p class="indent"><span class="smcap">His Early
+Pleadings.&mdash;Sextus Roscius Amerinus.&mdash;His
+Income.</span></p>
+</td>
+<td class="right_10">
+<p class="pn"><a href="#CHAPTER_IV">80</a></p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="center_100">CHAPTER V.</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="left_90">
+<p class="indent"><span class="smcap">Cicero as
+Qu&aelig;stor.</span></p>
+</td>
+<td class="right_10">
+<p class="pn"><a href="#CHAPTER_V">107</a></p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="center_100">CHAPTER VI.</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="left_90">
+<p class="indent"><span class="smcap">Verres.</span></p>
+</td>
+<td class="right_10">
+<p class="pn"><a href="#CHAPTER_VI">125</a></p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="center_100">CHAPTER VII.</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="left_90">
+<p class="indent"><span class="smcap">Cicero As &AElig;dile and
+Pr&aelig;tor.</span></p>
+</td>
+<td class="right_10">
+<p class="pn"><a href="#CHAPTER_VII">162</a></p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="center_100">CHAPTER VIII.</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="left_90">
+<p class="indent"><span class="smcap">Cicero as Consul.</span></p>
+</td>
+<td class="right_10">
+<p class="pn"><a href="#CHAPTER_VIII">184</a></p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="center_100"><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_6" id=
+"Page_6">6</a></span>CHAPTER IX.</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="left_90">
+<p class="indent"><span class="smcap">Catiline.</span></p>
+</td>
+<td class="right_10">
+<p class="pn"><a href="#CHAPTER_IX">206</a></p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="center_100">CHAPTER X.</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="left_90">
+<p class="indent"><span class="smcap">Cicero after his
+Consulship.</span></p>
+</td>
+<td class="right_10">
+<p class="pn"><a href="#CHAPTER_X">240</a></p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="center_100">CHAPTER XI.</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="left_90">
+<p class="indent"><span class="smcap">The Triumvirate.</span></p>
+</td>
+<td class="right_10">
+<p class="pn"><a href="#CHAPTER_XI">264</a></p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="center_100">CHAPTER XII.</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="left_90">
+<p class="indent"><span class="smcap">His Exile.</span></p>
+</td>
+<td class="right_10">
+<p class="pn"><a href="#CHAPTER_XII">297</a></p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+<h4>APPENDICES.</h4>
+
+<table width="100%" summary="TOC">
+<tr>
+<td class="left_90">
+<p class="indent"><span class="smcap">Appendix A.</span></p>
+</td>
+<td class="right_10">
+<p class="pn"><a href="#APPENDIX_A">335</a></p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="left_90">
+<p class="indent"><span class="smcap">Appendix B.</span></p>
+</td>
+<td class="right_10">
+<p class="pn"><a href="#APPENDIX_B">340</a></p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="left_90">
+<p class="indent"><span class="smcap">Appendix C.</span></p>
+</td>
+<td class="right_10">
+<p class="pn"><a href="#APPENDIX_C">342</a></p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="left_90">
+<p class="indent"><span class="smcap">Appendix D.</span></p>
+</td>
+<td class="right_10">
+<p class="pn"><a href="#APPENDIX_D">345</a></p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="left_90">
+<p class="indent"><span class="smcap">Appendix E.</span></p>
+</td>
+<td class="right_10">
+<p class="pn"><a href="#APPENDIX_E">347</a></p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_7" id="Page_7">
+7</a></span></p>
+
+<h4>THE</h4>
+<h2>LIFE OF CICERO.</h2>
+
+
+<h3><a name="CHAPTER_I" id="CHAPTER_I"></a><span class="smcap">Chapter I.</span></h3>
+
+<h4><i>INTRODUCTION.</i></h4>
+
+<p>I am conscious of a certain audacity in thus attempting to give
+a further life of Cicero which I feel I may probably fail in
+justifying by any new information; and on this account the
+enterprise, though it has been long considered, has been postponed,
+so that it may be left for those who come after me to burn or
+publish, as they may think proper; or, should it appear during my
+life, I may have become callous, through age, to criticism.</p>
+
+<p>The project of my work was anterior to the life by Mr. Forsyth,
+and was first suggested to me as I was reviewing the earlier
+volumes of Dean Merivale's History of the Romans under the Empire.
+In an article on the Dean's work, prepared for one of the magazines
+of the day, I inserted an apology for the character of Cicero,
+which was found to be too long as an episode, and was discarded by
+me, not without regret. From that time the subject has grown in my
+estimation till it has reached its present dimensions.</p>
+
+<p>I may say with truth that my book has sprung from love of the
+man, and from a heartfelt admiration of his virtues and his
+conduct, as well as of his gifts. I must acknowledge that<span
+class='pagenum'><a name="Page_8" id="Page_8">8</a></span> in
+discussing his character with men of letters, as I have been prone
+to do, I have found none quite to agree with me. His intellect they
+have admitted, and his industry; but his patriotism they have
+doubted, his sincerity they have disputed, and his courage they
+have denied. It might have become me to have been silenced by their
+verdict; but I have rather been instigated to appeal to the public,
+and to ask them to agree with me against my friends. It is not only
+that Cicero has touched all matters of interest to men, and has
+given a new grace to all that he has touched; that as an orator, a
+rhetorician, an essayist, and a correspondent he was supreme; that
+as a statesman he was honest, as an advocate fearless, and as a
+governor pure; that he was a man whose intellectual part always
+dominated that of the body; that in taste he was excellent, in
+thought both correct and enterprising, and that in language he was
+perfect. All this has been already so said of him by other
+biographers. Plutarch, who is as familiar to us as though he had
+been English, and Middleton, who thoroughly loved his subject, and
+latterly Mr. Forsyth, who has struggled to be honest to him, might
+have sufficed as telling us so much as that. But there was a
+humanity in Cicero, a something almost of Christianity, a stepping
+forward out of the dead intellectualities of Roman life into moral
+perceptions, into natural affections, into domesticity,
+philanthropy, and conscious discharge of duty, which do not seem to
+have been as yet fully appreciated. To have loved his neighbor as
+himself before the teaching of Christ was much for a man to
+achieve; and that he did this is what I claim for Cicero, and hope
+to bring home to the minds of those who can find time for reading
+yet another added to the constantly increasing volumes about Roman
+times.</p>
+
+<p>It has been the habit of some latter writers, who have left to
+Cicero his literary honors, to rob him of those which had been
+accorded to him as a politician. Macaulay, expressing his surprise
+at the fecundity of Cicero, and then passing on to the praise of
+the Philippics as senatorial speeches, says of him that<span class=
+'pagenum'><a name="Page_9" id="Page_9">9</a></span> he seems
+to have been at the head of the "minds of the second order." We
+cannot judge of the classification without knowing how many of the
+great men of the world are to be included in the first rank. But
+Macaulay probably intended to express an opinion that Cicero was
+inferior because he himself had never dominated others as Marius
+had done, and Sylla, and Pompey, and C&aelig;sar, and Augustus. But
+what if Cicero was ambitious for the good of others, while these
+men had desired power only for themselves?</p>
+
+<p>Dean Merivale says that Cicero was "discreet and decorous," as
+with a similar sneer another clergyman, Sydney Smith, ridiculed a
+Tory prime-minister because he was true to his wife. There is
+nothing so open to the bitterness of a little joke as those humble
+virtues by which no glitter can be gained, but only the happiness
+of many preserved. And the Dean declares that Cicero himself was
+not, except once or twice, and for a "moment only, a real power in
+the State." Men who usurped authority, such as those I have named,
+were the "real powers," and it was in opposition to such usurpation
+that Cicero was always urgent. Mr. Forsyth, who, as I have said,
+strives to be impartial, tells us that "the chief fault of Cicero's
+moral character was a want of sincerity." Absence of sincerity
+there was not. Deficiency of sincerity there was. Who among men has
+been free from such blame since history and the lives of men were
+first written? It will be my object to show that though less than
+godlike in that gift, by comparison with other men around him he
+was sincere, as he was also self-denying; which, if the two virtues
+be well examined, will indicate the same phase of character.</p>
+
+<p>But of all modern writers Mr. Froude has been the hardest to
+Cicero. His sketch of the life of C&aelig;sar is one prolonged
+censure on that of Cicero. Our historian, with all that glory of
+language for which he is so remarkable, has covered the poor orator
+with obloquy. There is no period in Cicero's life so touching, I
+think, as that during which he was hesitating <span class=
+'pagenum'><a name="Page_10" id="Page_10">10</a></span>whether,
+in the service of the Republic, it did or did not behoove him to
+join Pompey before the battle of Pharsalia. At this time he wrote
+to his friend Atticus various letters full of agonizing doubts as
+to what was demanded from him by his duty to his country, by his
+friendship for Pompey, by loyalty to his party, and by his own
+dignity. As to a passage in one of those, Mr. Froude says "that
+Cicero had lately spoken of C&aelig;sar's continuance in life as a
+disgrace to the State." "It has been seen also that he had long
+thought of assassination as the readiest means of ending it,"<a
+name="FNanchor_1_1" id="FNanchor_1_1"></a><a href="#Footnote_1_1"
+class="fnanchor">1</a> says Mr. Froude. The "It has been seen"
+refers to a statement made a few pages earlier, in which he
+translates certain words written by Cicero to Atticus.<a name=
+"FNanchor_2_2" id="FNanchor_2_2"></a><a href="#Footnote_2_2" class=
+"fnanchor">2</a> "He considered it a disgrace to them that
+C&aelig;sar was alive." That is his translation; and in his
+indignation he puts other words, as it were, into the mouth of his
+literary brother of two thousand years before. "Why did not
+somebody kill him?" The Latin words themselves are added in a
+note, "Cum vivere ipsum turpe sit nobis."<a name="FNanchor_3_3" id=
+"FNanchor_3_3"></a><a href="#Footnote_3_3" class="fnanchor">3</a>
+Hot indignation has so carried the translator away that he has
+missed the very sense of Cicero's language. "When even to draw the
+breath of life at such a time is a disgrace to us!" That is what
+Cicero meant. Mr. Froude in a preceding passage gives us another
+passage from a letter to Atticus,<a name="FNanchor_4_4" id=
+"FNanchor_4_4"></a><a href="#Footnote_4_4" class="fnanchor">4</a>
+"C&aelig;sar was mortal."<a name="FNanchor_5_5" id=
+"FNanchor_5_5"></a><a href="#Footnote_5_5" class="fnanchor">5</a>
+So much is an intended translation. Then Mr. Froude tells us how
+Cicero had "hailed C&aelig;sar's eventual murder with rapture;" and
+goes on to say, "We read the words with sorrow and yet with pity."
+But Cicero had never dreamed of C&aelig;sar's murder. The words of
+the passage are as follows: "Hunc primum mortalem esse, deinde
+etiam multis modis extingui posse cogitabam." "I bethought myself
+in the first place that this man was mortal, and then that there
+were a hundred ways in which he might be put on one side." All
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_11" id="Page_11">
+11</a></span>the latter authorities have, I believe, supposed the
+"hunc" or "this man" to be Pompey. I should say that this was
+proved by the gist of the whole letter&mdash;one of the most
+interesting that was ever written, as telling the workings of a
+great man's mind at a peculiar crisis of his life&mdash;did I not
+know that former learned editors have supposed C&aelig;sar to have
+been meant. But whether C&aelig;sar or Pompey, there is nothing in
+it to do with murder. It is a question&mdash;Cicero is saying to
+his friend&mdash;of the stability of the Republic. When a matter so
+great is considered, how is a man to trouble himself as to an
+individual who may die any day, or cease from any accident to be of
+weight? Cicero was speaking of the effect of this or that step on
+his own part. Am I, he says, for the sake of Pompey to bring down
+hordes of barbarians on my own country, sacrificing the Republic
+for the sake of a friend who is here to-day and may be gone
+to-morrow? Or for the sake of an enemy, if the reader thinks that
+the "hunc" refers to C&aelig;sar. The argument is the same. Am I to
+consider an individual when the Republic is at stake? Mr. Froude
+tells us that he reads "the words with sorrow and yet with pity."
+So would every one, I think, sympathizing with the patriot's doubts
+as to his leader, as to his party, and as to his country. Mr.
+Froude does so because he gathers from them that Cicero is
+premeditating the murder of C&aelig;sar!</p>
+
+<p>It is natural that a man should be judged out of his own mouth.
+A man who speaks much, and so speaks that his words shall be
+listened to and read, will be so judged. But it is not too much to
+demand that when a man's character is at stake his own words shall
+be thoroughly sifted before they are used against him.</p>
+
+<p>The writer of the biographical notice in the Encyclopedia
+Britannica on Cicero, sends down to posterity a statement that in
+the time of the first triumvirate, when our hero was withstanding
+the machinations of C&aelig;sar and Pompey against the liberties of
+Rome, he was open to be bought. The augurship <span class=
+'pagenum'><a name="Page_12" id="Page_12">12</a></span>would
+have bought him. "So pitiful," says the biographer, "was the bribe
+to which he would have sacrificed his honor, his opinions, and the
+commonwealth!" With no more sententious language was the character
+of a great man ever offered up to public scorn. And on what
+evidence? We should have known nothing of the bribe and the
+corruption but for a few playful words in a letter from Cicero
+himself to Atticus. He is writing from one of his villas to his
+friend in Rome, and asks for the news of the day: Who are to be the
+new consuls? Who is to have the vacant augurship? Ah, says he, they
+might have caught even me with that bait;<a name="FNanchor_6_6" id=
+"FNanchor_6_6"></a><a href="#Footnote_6_6" class="fnanchor">6</a>
+as he said on another occasion that he was so much in debt as to be
+fit for a rebel; and again, as I shall have to explain just now,
+that he was like to be called in question under the Cincian law
+because of a present of books! This was just at the point of his
+life when he was declining all offers of public service&mdash;of
+public service for which his soul longed&mdash;because they were
+made to him by C&aelig;sar. It was then that the "Vigintiviratus"
+was refused, which Quintilian mentions to his honor. It was then
+that he refused to be C&aelig;sar's lieutenant. It was then that he
+might have been fourth with C&aelig;sar, and Pompey, and Crassus,
+had he not felt himself bound not to serve against the Republic.
+And yet the biographer does not hesitate to load him with infamy
+because of a playful word in a letter half jocose and half pathetic
+to his friend. If a man's deeds be always honest, surely he should
+not be accused of dishonesty on the strength of some light word
+spoken in the confidence of familiar intercourse. The light words
+are taken to be grave because they meet the modern critic's eye
+clothed in the majesty of a dead language; and thus it comes to
+pass that their very meaning is misunderstood.</p>
+
+<p>My friend Mr. Collins speaks, in his charming little volume
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_13" id="Page_13">
+13</a></span>on Cicero, of "quiet evasions" of the Cincian law,<a
+name="FNanchor_7_7" id="FNanchor_7_7"></a><a href="#Footnote_7_7"
+class="fnanchor">7</a> and tells us that we are taught by
+Cicero's letters not to trust Cicero's words when he was in a
+boasting vein. What has the one thing to do with the other? He
+names no quiet evasions. Mr. Collins makes a surmise, by which the
+character of Cicero for honesty is impugned&mdash;without evidence.
+The anonymous biographer altogether misinterprets Cicero. Mr.
+Froude charges Cicero with anticipation of murder, grounding his
+charge on words which he has not taken the trouble to understand.
+Cicero is accused on the strength of his own private letters. It is
+because we have not the private letters of other persons that they
+are not so accused. The courtesies of the world exact, I will not
+say demand, certain deviations from straightforward expression; and
+these are made most often in private conversations and in private
+correspondence. Cicero complies with the ways of the world; but his
+epistles are no longer private, and he is therefore subjected to
+charges of falsehood. It is because Cicero's letters, written
+altogether for privacy, have been found worthy to be made public
+that such accusations have been made. When the injustice of these
+critics strikes me, I almost wish that Cicero's letters had not
+been preserved.</p>
+
+<p>As I have referred to the evidence of those who have, in these
+latter days, spoken against Cicero, I will endeavor to place before
+the reader the testimony of his character which <span class=
+'pagenum'><a name="Page_14" id="Page_14">14</a></span>was
+given by writers, chiefly of his own nation, who dealt with his
+name for the hundred and fifty years after his death&mdash;from the
+time of Augustus down to that of Adrian&mdash;a period much given
+to literature, in which the name of a politician and a man of
+literature would assuredly be much discussed. Readers will see in
+what language he was spoken of by those who came after him. I trust
+they will believe that if I knew of testimony on the other side, of
+records adverse to the man, I would give them. The first passage to
+which I will allude does not bear Cicero's name; and it may be that
+I am wrong in assuming honor to Cicero from a passage in poetry,
+itself so famous, in which no direct allusion is made to himself.
+But the idea that Virgil in the following lines refers to the
+manner in which Cicero soothed the multitude who rose to destroy
+the theatre when the knights took their front seats in accordance
+with Otho's law, does not originate with me. I give the lines as
+translated by Dryden, with the original in a note.<a name=
+"FNanchor_8_8" id="FNanchor_8_8"></a><a href="#Footnote_8_8" class=
+"fnanchor">8</a></p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i05">"As when in tumults rise the
+ignoble crowd,</span> <span class="i0">Mad are their motions, and
+their tongues are loud;</span> <span class="i0">And stones and
+brands in rattling volleys fly,</span> <span class="i0">And all the
+rustic arms that fury can supply;</span> <span class="i0">If then
+some grave and pious man appear,</span> <span class="i0">They hush
+their noise, and lend a listening ear;</span> <span class="i0">He
+soothes with sober words their angry mood,</span> <span class=
+"i0">And quenches their innate desire of blood."</span></div>
+</div>
+
+<p>This, if it be not intended for a portrait of Cicero on that
+occasion, exactly describes his position and his success. We have a
+fragment of Cornelius Nepos, the biographer of the <span class=
+'pagenum'><a name="Page_15" id="Page_15">15</a></span>Augustan
+age, declaring that at Cicero's death men had to doubt whether
+literature or the Republic had lost the most.<a name="FNanchor_9_9"
+id="FNanchor_9_9"></a><a href="#Footnote_9_9" class=
+"fnanchor">9</a> Livy declared of him only, that he would be the
+best writer of Latin prose who was most like to Cicero.<a name=
+"FNanchor_10_10" id="FNanchor_10_10"></a><a href="#Footnote_10_10"
+class="fnanchor">10</a> Velleius Paterculus, who wrote in the
+time of Tiberius, speaks of Cicero's achievements with the highest
+honor. "At this period," he says, "lived Marcus Cicero, who owed
+everything to himself; a man of altogether a new family, as
+distinguished for ability as he was for the purity of his life."<a
+name="FNanchor_11_11" id="FNanchor_11_11"></a><a href=
+"#Footnote_11_11" class="fnanchor">11</a> Valerius Maximus quotes
+him as an example of a forgiving character.<a name="FNanchor_12_12"
+id="FNanchor_12_12"></a><a href="#Footnote_12_12" class=
+"fnanchor">12</a> Perhaps the warmest praise ever given to him
+came from the pen of Pliny the elder, from whose address to the
+memory of Cicero I will quote only a few words, as I shall refer to
+it more at length when speaking of his consulship. "Hail thou,"
+says Pliny, "who first among men was called the father of your
+country."<a name="FNanchor_13_13" id="FNanchor_13_13"></a><a href=
+"#Footnote_13_13" class="fnanchor">13</a> Martial, in one of his
+distichs, tells the traveller that if he have but a book of
+Cicero's writing he may fancy that he is travelling with Cicero
+himself.<a name="FNanchor_14_14" id="FNanchor_14_14"></a><a href=
+"#Footnote_14_14" class="fnanchor">14</a> Lucan, in his bombastic
+verse, declares how Cicero dared to speak of peace in the camp of
+Pharsalia. The reader may think that Cicero should have said
+nothing of the kind, but Lucan mentions him with all honor.<a name=
+"FNanchor_15_15" id="FNanchor_15_15"></a><a href="#Footnote_15_15"
+class="fnanchor">15</a> Not Tacitus, as I think, but some author
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_16" id="Page_16">
+16</a></span>whose essay De Oratoribus was written about the time
+of Tacitus, and whose work has come to us with the name of Tacitus,
+has told us of Cicero that he was a master of logic, of ethics, and
+of physical science.<a name="FNanchor_16_16" id=
+"FNanchor_16_16"></a><a href="#Footnote_16_16" class=
+"fnanchor">16</a> Everybody remembers the passage in Juvenal,</p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+<div class="stanza"><span class="i10">"Sed Roma parentem</span>
+<span class="i0">Roma patrem patri&aelig; Ciceronem libera
+dixit."</span></div>
+</div>
+
+<p>"Rome, even when she was free, declared him to be the father of
+his country."<a name="FNanchor_17_17" id="FNanchor_17_17"></a><a
+href="#Footnote_17_17" class="fnanchor">17</a> Even Plutarch, who
+generally seems to have a touch of jealousy when speaking of
+Cicero, declares that he verified the prediction of Plato, "That
+every State would be delivered from its calamities whenever power
+should fortunately unite with wisdom and justice in one person."<a
+name="FNanchor_18_18" id="FNanchor_18_18"></a><a href=
+"#Footnote_18_18" class="fnanchor">18</a> The praises of
+Quintilian as to the man are so mixed with the admiration of the
+critic for the hero of letters, that I would have omitted to
+mention them here were it not that they will help to declare what
+was the general opinion as to Cicero at the time in which it was
+written. He has been speaking of Demosthenes,<a name=
+"FNanchor_19_19" id="FNanchor_19_19"></a><a href="#Footnote_19_19"
+class="fnanchor">19</a> and then goes on: "Nor in regard to
+Cicero do I see that he ever failed in the duty of a good citizen.
+There is in evidence of this the splendor of his consulship, the
+rare integrity of his provincial administration, his refusal of
+office under C&aelig;sar,<a name="FNanchor_20_20" id=
+"FNanchor_20_20"></a><a href="#Footnote_20_20" class=
+"fnanchor">20</a> the firmness of his mind on the civil wars,
+giving way neither to hope nor fear, though these sorrows came
+heavily on him in his old age. On all these occasions he did the
+best he could for the Republic." Florus, who wrote after the twelve
+C&aelig;sars, in the time of Trajan and of Adrian, whose rapid
+summary of Roman events can hardly be called a history, tells us,
+in a few words, how Catiline's conspiracy was crushed by the
+authority <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_17" id="Page_17">
+17</a></span>of Cicero and Cato in opposition to that of
+C&aelig;sar.<a name="FNanchor_21_21" id="FNanchor_21_21"></a><a
+href="#Footnote_21_21" class="fnanchor">21</a> Then, when he has
+passed in a few short chapters over all the intervening history of
+the Roman Empire, he relates, in pathetic words, the death of
+Cicero. "It was the custom in Rome to put up on the rostra the
+heads of those who had been slain; but now the city was not able to
+restrain its tears when the head of Cicero was seen there, upon the
+spot from which the citizens had so often listened to his words."<a
+name="FNanchor_22_22" id="FNanchor_22_22"></a><a href=
+"#Footnote_22_22" class="fnanchor">22</a> Such is the testimony
+given to this man by the writers who may be supposed to have known
+most of him as having been nearest to his time. They all wrote
+after him. Sallust, who was certainly his enemy, wrote of him in
+his lifetime, but never wrote in his dispraise. It is evident that
+public opinion forbade him to do so. Sallust is never warm in
+Cicero's praise, as were those subsequent authors whose words I
+have quoted, and has been made subject to reproach for envy, for
+having passed too lightly over Cicero's doings and words in his
+account of Catiline's conspiracy; but what he did say was to
+Cicero's credit. Men had heard of the danger, and therefore, says
+Sallust,<a name="FNanchor_23_23" id="FNanchor_23_23"></a><a href=
+"#Footnote_23_23" class="fnanchor">23</a> "They conceived the
+idea of intrusting the consulship to Cicero. For before that the
+nobles were envious, and thought that the consulship would be
+polluted if it were conferred on a <i>novus homo</i>, however
+distinguished. But when danger came, envy and pride had to give
+way." He afterward declares that Cicero made a speech against
+Catiline most brilliant, and at the same time useful to the
+Republic. This was lukewarm praise, but coming from Sallust, who
+would have censured if he could, it is as eloquent as any eulogy.
+There is extant a passage attributed to Sallust full of virulent
+abuse of Cicero, but no one now imagines that Sallust wrote it. It
+is called <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_18" id="Page_18">
+18</a></span>the Declamation of Sallust against Cicero, and bears
+intrinsic evidence that it was written in after years. It suited
+some one to forge pretended invectives between Sallust and Cicero,
+and is chiefly noteworthy here because it gives to Dio Cassius a
+foundation for the hardest of hard words he said against the
+orator.<a name="FNanchor_24_24" id="FNanchor_24_24"></a><a href=
+"#Footnote_24_24" class="fnanchor">24</a></p>
+
+<p>Dio Cassius was a Greek who wrote in the reign of Alexander
+Severus, more than two centuries and a half after the death of
+Cicero, and he no doubt speaks evil enough of our hero. What was
+the special cause of jealousy on his part cannot probably be now
+known, but the nature of his hatred may be gathered from the
+passage in the note, which is so foul-mouthed that it can be only
+inserted under the veil of his own language.<a name=
+"FNanchor_25_25" id="FNanchor_25_25"></a><a href="#Footnote_25_25"
+class="fnanchor">25</a> Among other absurdities Dio Cassius says
+of Cicero that in his latter days he put away a gay young wife,
+forty years younger than himself, in order that he might enjoy
+without disturbance the company of another lady who was nearly as
+much older than himself as his wife was younger.</p>
+
+<p>Now I ask, having brought forward so strong a testimony, not, I
+will say, as to the character of the man, but of the estimation in
+which he was held by those who came shortly after <span class=
+'pagenum'><a name="Page_19" id="Page_19">19</a></span>him in
+his own country; having shown, as I profess that I have shown, that
+his name was always treated with singular dignity and respect, not
+only by the lovers of the old Republic but by the minions of the
+Empire; having found that no charge was ever made against him
+either for insincerity or cowardice or dishonesty by those who
+dealt commonly with his name, am I not justified in saying that
+they who have in later days accused him should have shown their
+authority? Their authority they have always found in his own words.
+It is on his own evidence against himself that they have
+depended&mdash;on his own evidence, or occasionally on their own
+surmises. When we are told of his cowardice, because those human
+vacillations of his, humane as well as human, have been laid bare
+to us as they came quivering out of his bosom on to his fingers! He
+is a coward to the critics because they have written without giving
+themselves time to feel the true meaning of his own words. If we
+had only known his acts and not his words&mdash;how he stood up
+against the judges at the trial of Verres, with what courage he
+encountered the responsibility of his doings at the time of
+Catiline, how he joined Pompey in Macedonia from a sense of sheer
+duty, how he defied Antony when to defy Antony was probable
+death&mdash;then we should not call him a coward! It is out of his
+own mouth that he is condemned. Then surely his words should be
+understood. Queen Christina says of him, in one of her maxims, that
+"Cicero was the only coward that was capable of great actions." The
+Queen of Sweden, whose sentences are never worth very much, has
+known her history well enough to have learned that Cicero's acts
+were noble, but has not understood the meaning of words
+sufficiently to extract from Cicero's own expressions their true
+bearing. The bravest of us all, if he is in high place, has to
+doubt much before he can know what true courage will demand of him;
+and these doubts the man of words will express, if there be given
+to him an <i>alter ego</i> such as Cicero had in Atticus.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_20" id="Page_20">
+20</a></span>In reference to the biography of Mr Forsyth I must,
+in justice both to him and to Cicero, quote one passage from the
+work: "Let those who, like De Quincey,<a name="FNanchor_26_26" id=
+"FNanchor_26_26"></a><a href="#Footnote_26_26" class=
+"fnanchor">26</a> Mommsen, and others, speak disparagingly of
+Cicero, and are so lavish in praise of C&aelig;sar, recollect that
+C&aelig;sar never was troubled by a conscience." Here it is that we
+find that advance almost to Christianity of which I have spoken,
+and that superiority of mind being which makes Cicero the most fit
+to be loved of all the Romans.</p>
+
+<p>It is hard for a man, even in regard to his own private
+purposes, to analyze the meaning of a conscience, if he put out of
+question all belief in a future life. Why should a man do right if
+it be not for a reward here or hereafter? Why should anything be
+right&mdash;or wrong? The Stoics tried to get over the difficulty
+by declaring that if a man could conquer all his personal desires
+he would become, by doing so, happy, and would therefore have
+achieved the only end at which a man can rationally aim. The school
+had many scholars, but probably never a believer. The normal Greek
+or Roman might be deterred by the law, which means fear of
+punishment, or by the opinion of his neighbors, which means
+ignominy. He might recognize the fact that comfort would combine
+itself with innocence, or disease and want with lust and greed. In
+this there was little need of a conscience&mdash;hardly, perhaps,
+room for it. But when ambition came, with all the opportunities
+that chance, audacity, and intellect would give&mdash;as it did to
+Sylla, to C&aelig;sar, and to Augustus&mdash;then there was nothing
+to restrain the men. There was to such a man no right but his
+power, no wrong but opposition to it. His cruelty or his <span
+class='pagenum'><a name="Page_21" id="Page_21">
+21</a></span>clemency might be more or less, as his conviction of
+the utility of this or that other weapon for dominating men might
+be strong with him. Or there might be some variation in the flowing
+of the blood about his heart which might make a massacre of
+citizens a pleasing diversion or a painful process to him; but
+there was no conscience. With the man of whom we are about to speak
+conscience was strong. In his sometimes doubtful wanderings after
+political wisdom&mdash;in those mental mazes which have been called
+insincerity&mdash;we shall see him, if we look well into his
+doings, struggling to find whether, in searching for what was his
+duty, he should go to this side or to that. Might he best hope a
+return to that state of things which he thought good for his
+country by adhering to C&aelig;sar or to Pompey? We see the
+workings of his conscience, and, as we remember that Scipio's dream
+of his, we feel sure that he had, in truth, within him a
+recognition of a future life.</p>
+
+<p>In discussing the character of a man, there is no course of
+error so fertile as the drawing of a hard and fast line. We are
+attracted by salient points, and, seeing them clearly, we jump to
+conclusions, as though there were a light-house on every point by
+which the nature of the coast would certainly be shown to us. And
+so it will, if we accept the light only for so much of the shore as
+it illumines. But to say that a man is insincere because he has
+vacillated in this or the other difficulty, that he is a coward
+because he has feared certain dangers, that he is dishonest because
+he has swerved, that he is a liar because an untrue word has been
+traced to him, is to suppose that you know all the coast because
+one jutting headland has been defined to you. He who so expresses
+himself on a man's character is either ignorant of human nature, or
+is in search of stones with which to pelt his enemy. "He has lied!
+He has lied!" How often in our own political contests do we hear
+the cry with a note of triumph! And if he have, how often has he
+told the truth? And if he have, how many are entitled by pure
+innocence in that matter to throw a stone at <span class=
+'pagenum'><a name="Page_22" id="Page_22">22</a></span>him? And
+if he have, do we not know how lies will come to the tongue of a
+man without thought of lying? In his stoutest efforts after the
+truth a man may so express himself that when afterward he is driven
+to compare his recent and his former words, he shall hardly be able
+to say even to himself that he has not lied. It is by the tenor of
+a man's whole life that we must judge him, whether he be a liar or
+no.</p>
+
+<p>To expect a man to be the same at sixty as he was at thirty, is
+to suppose that the sun at noon shall be graced with the colors
+which adorn its setting. And there are men whose intellects are set
+on so fine a pivot that a variation in the breeze of the moment,
+which coarser minds shall not feel, will carry them round with a
+rapidity which baffles the common eye. The man who saw his duty
+clearly on this side in the morning shall, before the evening come,
+recognize it on the other; and then again, and again, and yet again
+the vane shall go round. It may be that an instrument shall be too
+fine for our daily uses. We do not want a clock to strike the
+minutes, or a glass to tell the momentary changes in the
+atmosphere. It may be found that for the work of the world, the
+coarse work&mdash;and no work is so coarse, though none is so
+important, as that which falls commonly into the hands of
+statesmen&mdash;instruments strong in texture, and by reason of
+their rudeness not liable to sudden impressions, may be the best.
+That it is which we mean when we declare that a scrupulous man is
+impractical in politics. But the same man may, at various periods
+of his life, and on various days at the same period, be scrupulous
+and unscrupulous, impractical and practical, as the circumstances
+of the occasion may affect him. At one moment the rule of simple
+honesty will prevail with him. "Fiat justitia, ruat c&oelig;lum." "Si
+fractus illabatur orbis Impavidum ferient ruin&aelig;." At another
+he will see the necessity of a compromise for the good of the many.
+He will tell himself that if the best cannot be done, he must
+content himself with the next best. He must shake hands with the
+imperfect, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_23" id="Page_23">
+23</a></span>as the best way of lifting himself up from a bad way
+toward a better. In obedience to his very conscience he will
+temporize, and, finding no other way of achieving good, will do
+even evil that good may come of it. "Rem si possis recte; si non,
+quocunque modo rem." In judging of such a character as this, a hard
+and fast line will certainly lead us astray. In judging of Cicero,
+such a hard and fast line has too generally been used. He was a man
+singularly sensitive to all influences. It must be admitted that he
+was a vane, turning on a pivot finer than those on which statesmen
+have generally been made to work. He had none of the fixed purpose
+of C&aelig;sar, or the unflinching principle of Cato. They were men
+cased in brass, whose feelings nothing could hurt. They suffered
+from none of those inward flutterings of the heart, doubtful
+aspirations, human longings, sharp sympathies, dreams of something
+better than this world, fears of something worse, which make Cicero
+so like a well-bred, polished gentleman of the present day. It is
+because he has so little like a Roman that he is of all the Romans
+the most attractive.</p>
+
+<p>Still there may be doubt whether, with all the intricacies of
+his character, his career was such as to justify a further
+biography at this distance of time. "What's Hecuba to him, or he to
+Hecuba?" asks Hamlet, when he finds himself stirred by the passion
+thrown into the bare recital of an old story by an itinerant
+player. What is Cicero to us of the nineteenth century that we
+should care so much for him as to read yet another book?
+Nevertheless, Hamlet was moved because the tale was well told.
+There is matter in the earnestness, the pleasantness, the
+patriotism, and the tragedy of the man's life to move a reader
+still&mdash;if the story could only be written of him as it is
+felt! The difficulty lies in that, and not in the nature of the
+story.</p>
+
+<p>The period of Cicero's life was the very turning-point of
+civilization and government in the history of the world. At that
+period of time the world, as we know it, was Rome. <span class=
+'pagenum'><a name="Page_24" id="Page_24">24</a></span>Greece
+had sunk. The Macedonian Empire had been destroyed. The kingdoms of
+the East&mdash;whether conquered, or even when conquering, as was
+Parthia for awhile&mdash;were barbaric, outside the circle of
+cultivation, and to be brought into it only by the arms and
+influence of Rome. During C&aelig;sar's career Gaul was conquered;
+and Britain, with what was known of Germany, supposed to be partly
+conquered. The subjugation of Africa and Spain was all but
+completed. Letters, too, had been or were being introduced.
+Cicero's use of language was so perfect that it seems to us to have
+been almost necessarily the result of a long established art of
+Latin literature. But, in truth, he is the earliest of the prose
+writers of his country with whose works we are familiar. Excepting
+Varro, who was born but ten years before him, no earlier Latin
+prose writer has left more than a name to us; and the one work by
+which Varro is at all known, the De Re Rustica, was written after
+Cicero's death. Lucretius, whose language we regard as almost
+archaic, so unlike is it to that of Virgil or Horace, was born
+eight years after Cicero. In a great degree Cicero formed the Latin
+language&mdash;or produced that manipulation of it which has made
+it so graceful in prose, and so powerful a vehicle of thought. That
+which he took from any Latin writer he took from Terence.</p>
+
+<p>And it was then, just then, that there arose in Rome that
+unpremeditated change in its form of government which resulted in
+the self-assumed dictatorship of C&aelig;sar, and the usurpation
+of the Empire by Augustus. The old Rome had had kings. Then the
+name and the power became odious&mdash;the name to all the
+citizens, no doubt, but the power simply to the nobility, who
+grudged the supremacy of one man. The kings were abolished, and an
+oligarchy was established under the name of a Republic, with its
+annual magistrates&mdash;at first its two Consuls, then its
+Pr&aelig;tors and others, and occasionally a Dictator, as some current
+event demanded a concentration of temporary power in a single hand
+for a certain purpose. <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_25" id=
+"Page_25">25</a></span>The Republic was no republic, as we
+understand the word; nor did it ever become so, though their was
+always going on a perpetual struggle to transfer the power from the
+nobles to the people, in which something was always being given or
+pretended to be given to the outside class. But so little was as
+yet understood of liberty that, as each plebeian made his way up
+into high place and became one of the magistrates of the State, he
+became also one of the oligarchical faction. There was a continued
+contest, with a certain amount of good faith on each side, on
+behalf of the so-called Republic&mdash;but still a contest for
+power. This became so continued that a foreign war was at times
+regarded as a blessing, because it concentrated the energies of the
+State, which had been split and used by the two sections&mdash;by
+each against the other. It is probably the case that the invasion
+of the Gauls in earlier days, and, later on, the second Punic war,
+threatening as they were in their incidents to the power of Rome,
+provided the Republic with that vitality which kept it so long in
+existence. Then came Marius, dominant on one side as a tribune of
+the people, and Sylla, as aristocrat on the other, and the civil
+wars between them, in which, as one prevailed or the other, Rome
+was mastered. How Marius died, and Sylla reigned for three bloody,
+fatal years, is outside the scope of our purpose&mdash;except in
+this, that Cicero saw Sylla's proscriptions, and made his first
+essay into public life hot with anger at the Dictator's
+tyranny.</p>
+
+<p>It occurs to us as we read the history of Rome, beginning with
+the early Consuls and going to the death of C&aelig;sar and of
+Cicero, and the accomplished despotism of Augustus, that the
+Republic could not have been saved by any efforts, and was in truth
+not worth the saving. We are apt to think, judging from our own
+idea of liberty, that there was so much of tyranny, so little of
+real freedom in the Roman form of government, that it was not good
+enough to deserve our sympathies. But it had been successful. It
+had made a great people, and had produced a wide-spread
+civilization. Roman <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_26" id=
+"Page_26">26</a></span>citizenship was to those outside the
+one thing the most worthy to be obtained. That career which led the
+great Romans up from the state of Qu&aelig;stor to the &AElig;dile's,
+Pr&aelig;tor's, and Consul's chair, and thence to the rich reward of
+provincial government, was held to be the highest then open to the
+ambition of man. The Kings of Greece, and of the East, and of
+Africa were supposed to be inferior in their very rank to a Roman
+Proconsul, and this greatness was carried on with a semblance of
+liberty, and was compatible with a belief in the majesty of the
+Roman citizen. When Cicero began his work, Consuls, Pr&aelig;tors,
+&AElig;diles, and Qu&aelig;stors were still chosen by the votes of the
+citizens. There was bribery, no doubt, and intimidation, and a
+resort to those dirty arts of canvassing with which we English have
+been so familiar; but in Cicero's time the male free inhabitants of
+Rome did generally carry the candidates to whom they attached
+themselves. The salt of their republican theory was not as yet
+altogether washed out from their practice.</p>
+
+<p>The love of absolute liberty as it has been cultivated among
+modern races did not exist in the time of Cicero. The idea never
+seems to have reached even his bosom, human and humanitarian as
+were his sympathies, that a man, as man, should be free. Half the
+inhabitants of Rome were slaves, and the institution was so grafted
+in the life of the time that it never occurred to a Roman that
+slaves, as a body, should be manumitted. The slaves themselves,
+though they were not, as have been the slaves whom we have seen, of
+a different color and presumed inferior race, do not themselves
+seem to have entertained any such idea. They were instigated now
+and again to servile wars, but there was no rising in quest of
+freedom generally. Nor was it repugnant to the Roman theory of
+liberty that the people whom they dominated, though not subjected
+to slavery, should still be outside the pale of civil freedom. That
+boon was to be reserved for the Roman citizen, and for him only. It
+had become common to admit to citizenship <span class='pagenum'><a
+name="Page_27" id="Page_27">27</a></span>the inhabitants of
+other towns and further territories. The glory was kept not
+altogether for Rome, but for Romans.</p>
+
+<p>Thus, though the government was oligarchical, and the very
+essence of freedom ignored, there was a something which stood in
+the name of liberty, and could endear itself to a real patriot.
+With genuine patriotism Cicero loved his country, and beginning his
+public life as he did at the close of Sylla's tyranny, he was able
+to entertain a dream that the old state of things might be restored
+and the republican form of government maintained. There should
+still be two Consuls in Rome, whose annual election would guard the
+State against regal dominion. And there should, at the same time,
+be such a continuance of power in the hands of the better
+class&mdash;the "optimates," as he called them&mdash;as would
+preserve the city from democracy and revolution. No man ever
+trusted more entirely to popular opinion than Cicero, or was more
+anxious for aristocratic authority. But neither in one direction
+nor the other did he look for personal aggrandizement, beyond that
+which might come to him in accordance with the law and in
+subjection to the old form of government.</p>
+
+<p>It is because he was in truth patriotic, because his dreams of a
+Republic were noble dreams, because he was intent on doing good in
+public affairs, because he was anxious for the honor of Rome and of
+Romans, not because he was or was not a "real power in the State"
+that his memory is still worth recording. Added to this was the
+intellect and the wit and erudition of the man, which were at any
+rate supreme. And then, though we can now see that his efforts were
+doomed to failure by the nature of the circumstances surrounding
+him, he was so nearly successful, so often on the verge of success,
+that we are exalted by the romance of his story into the region of
+personal sympathy. As we are moved by the aspirations and
+sufferings of a hero in a tragedy, so are we stirred by the
+efforts, the fortune, and at last the fall of this man. There is a
+picturesqueness about the life of Cicero which is wanting in the
+stories <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_28" id="Page_28">
+28</a></span>of Marius or Sylla, of Pompey, or even of
+C&aelig;sar&mdash;a picturesqueness which is produced in great part
+by these very doubtings which have been counted against him as
+insincerity.</p>
+
+<p>His hands were clean when the hands of all around him were
+defiled by greed. How infinitely Cicero must have risen above his
+time when he could have clean hands! A man in our days will keep
+himself clean from leprosy because to be a leper is to be despised
+by those around him. Advancing wisdom has taught us that such
+leprosy is bad, and public opinion coerces us. There is something
+too, we must suppose, in the lessons of Christianity. Or it may be
+that the man of our day, with all these advantages, does not keep
+himself clean&mdash;that so many go astray that public opinion
+shall almost seem to tremble in the balance. Even with us this and
+that abomination becomes allowable because so many do it. With the
+Romans, in the time of Cicero, greed, feeding itself on usury,
+rapine, and dishonesty, was so fully the recognized condition of
+life that its indulgence entailed no disgrace. But Cicero, with
+eyes within him which saw farther than the eyes of other men,
+perceived the baseness of the stain. It has been said also of him
+that he was not altogether free from reproach. It has been
+suggested that he accepted payment for his services as an advocate,
+any such payment being illegal. The accusation is founded on the
+knowledge that other advocates allowed themselves to be paid, and
+on the belief that Cicero could not have lived as he did without an
+income from that source. And then there is a story told of him
+that, though he did much at a certain period of his life to repress
+the usury, and to excite at the same time the enmity of a powerful
+friend, he might have done more. As we go on, the stories of these
+things will be told; but the very nature of the allegations against
+him prove how high he soared in honesty above the manners of his
+day. In discussing the character of the men, little is thought of
+the robberies of Sylla, the borrowings of C&aelig;sar, the
+money-lending of Brutus, or the accumulated wealth of <span class=
+'pagenum'><a name="Page_29" id="Page_29">29</a></span>Crassus.
+To plunder a province, to drive usury to the verge of personal
+slavery, to accept bribes for perjured judgment, to take illegal
+fees for services supposed to be gratuitous, was so much the custom
+of the noble Romans that we hardly hate his dishonest greed when
+displayed in its ordinary course. But because Cicero's honesty was
+abnormal, we are first surprised, and then, suspecting little
+deviations, rise up in wrath against him, because in the midst of
+Roman profligacy he was not altogether a Puritan in his money
+matters.</p>
+
+<p>Cicero is known to us in three great capacities: as a statesman,
+an advocate, and a man of letters. As the combination of such
+pursuits is common in our own days, so also was it in his.
+C&aelig;sar added them all to the great work of his life as a
+soldier. But it was given to Cicero to take a part in all those
+political struggles, from the resignation of Sylla to the first
+rising of the young Octavius, which were made on behalf of the
+Republic, and were ended by its downfall. His political life
+contains the story of the conversion of Rome from republican to
+imperial rule; and Rome was then the world. Could there have been
+no Augustus, no Nero, and then no Trajan, all Europe would have
+been different. Cicero's efforts were put forth to prevent the
+coming of an Augustus or a Nero, or the need of a Trajan; and as we
+read of them we feel that, had success been possible, he would have
+succeeded.</p>
+
+<p>As an advocate he was unsurpassed. From him came the
+feeling&mdash;whether it be right or wrong&mdash;that a lawyer, in
+pleading for his client, should give to that client's cause not
+only all his learning and all his wit, but also all his sympathy.
+To me it is marvellous, and interesting rather than beautiful, to
+see how completely Cicero can put off his own identity and assume
+another's in any cause, whatever it be, of which he has taken the
+charge. It must, however, be borne in mind that in old Rome the
+distinction between speeches made in political and in civil or
+criminal cases was not equally well marked as with us, and also
+that the reader having the speeches which have <span class=
+'pagenum'><a name="Page_30" id="Page_30">30</a></span>come
+down to us, whether of one nature or the other, presented to him in
+the same volume, is apt to confuse the public and that which may,
+perhaps, be called the private work of the man. In the speeches
+best known to us Cicero was working as a public man for public
+objects, and the ardor, I may say the fury, of his energy in the
+cause which he was advocating was due to his public aspirations.
+The orations which have come to us in three sets, some of them
+published only but never spoken&mdash;those against Verres, against
+Catiline, and the Philippics against Antony&mdash;were all of this
+nature, though the first concerned the conduct of a criminal charge
+against one individual. Of these I will speak in their turn; but I
+mention them here in order that I may, if possible, induce the
+reader to begin his inquiry into Cicero's character as an advocate
+with a just conception of the objects of the man. He wished, no
+doubt, to shine, as does the barrister of to-day: he wished to
+rise; he wished, if you will, to make his fortune, not by the
+taking of fees, but by extending himself into higher influence by
+the authority of his name. No doubt he undertook this and the other
+case without reference to the truth or honesty of the cause, and,
+when he did so, used all his energy for the bad, as he did for the
+good cause. There seems to be special accusation made against him
+on this head, as though, the very fact that he undertook his work
+without pay threw upon him the additional obligation of undertaking
+no cause that was not in itself upright. With us the advocate does
+this notoriously for his fee. Cicero did it as notoriously in
+furtherance of some political object of the moment, or in
+maintenance of a friendship which was politically important. I say
+nothing against the modern practice. This would not be the place
+for such an argument. Nor do I say that, by rules of absolute right
+and wrong, Cicero was right; but he was as right, at any rate, as
+the modern barrister. And in reaching the high-minded conditions
+under which he worked, he had only the light of his own genius to
+guide him. When <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_31" id=
+"Page_31">31</a></span>we compare the clothing of the savage
+race with our own, their beads and woad and straw and fibres with
+our own petticoats and pantaloons, we acknowledge the progress of
+civilization and the growth of machinery. It is not a wonderful
+thing to us that an African prince should not be as perfectly
+dressed as a young man in Piccadilly. But, when we make a
+comparison of morals between our own time and a period before
+Christ, we seem to forget that more should be expected from us than
+from those who lived two thousand years ago.</p>
+
+<p>There are some of those pleadings, speeches made by Cicero on
+behalf of or against an accused party, from which we may learn more
+of Roman life than from any other source left to us. Much we may
+gather from Terence, much from Horace, something from Juvenal.
+There is hardly, indeed, a Latin author from which an attentive
+reader may not pick up some detail of Roman customs. Cicero's
+letters are themselves very prolific. But the pretty things of the
+poets are not quite facts, nor are the bitter things of the
+satirist; and though a man's letters to his friend may be true,
+such letters as come to us will have been the products of the
+greater minds, and will have come from a small and special class. I
+fear that the Newgate Calendar of the day would tell us more of the
+ways of living then prevailing than the letters of Lady Mary W.
+Montagu or of Horace Walpole. From the orations against Verres we
+learn how the people of a province lived under the tyranny
+inflicted upon them; and from those spoken in defence of Sextus
+Amerinus and Aulus Cluentius, we gather something of the horrors of
+Roman life&mdash;not in Rome, indeed, but within the limits of
+Roman citizenship.</p>
+
+<p>It is, however, as a man of letters that Cicero will be held in
+the highest esteem. It has been his good-fortune to have a great
+part of what he wrote preserved for future ages. His works have not
+perished, as have those of his contemporaries, Varro and
+Hortensius. But this has been due to two causes, which were
+independent of Fortune. He himself believed in <span class=
+'pagenum'><a name="Page_32" id="Page_32">32</a></span>their
+value, and took measures for their protection; and those who lived
+in his own time, and in the immediately succeeding ages,
+entertained the same belief and took the same care. Livy said that,
+to write Latin well, the writer should write it like Cicero; and
+Quintilian, the first of Latin critics, repeated to us what Livy
+had asserted.<a name="FNanchor_27_27" id="FNanchor_27_27"></a><a
+href="#Footnote_27_27" class="fnanchor">27</a> There is a
+sweetness of language about Cicero which runs into the very sound;
+so that passages read aright would, by their very cadences, charm
+the ear of listeners ignorant of the language. Eulogy never was so
+happy as his. Eulogy, however, is tasteless in comparison with
+invective. Cicero's abuse is awful. Let the reader curious in such
+matters turn to the diatribes against Vatinius, one of
+C&aelig;sar's creatures, and to that against the unfortunate
+Proconsul Piso; or to his attacks on Gabinius, who was Consul
+together with Piso in the year of Cicero's banishment. There are
+wonderful morsels in the philippics dealing with Antony's private
+character; but the words which he uses against Gabinius and Piso
+beat all that I know elsewhere in the science of invective. Junius
+could not approach him; and even Macaulay, though he has, in
+certain passages, been very bitter, has not allowed himself the
+latitude which Roman taste and Roman manners permitted to
+Cicero.</p>
+
+<p>It may, however, be said that the need of biographical memoirs
+as to a man of letters is by no means in proportion to the
+excellence of the work that he has achieved. Alexander is known but
+little to us, because we know so little of the details of his life.
+C&aelig;sar is much to us, because we have in truth been made
+acquainted with him. But Shakspeare, of whose absolute doings we
+know almost nothing, would not be nearer or dearer had he even had
+a Boswell to paint his daily portrait. The man of letters is, in
+truth, ever writing his own biography. What there is in his mind is
+being declared to the world at large by himself; and if he can so
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_33" id="Page_33">
+33</a></span>write that the world at large shall care to read what
+is written, no other memoir will, perhaps, be necessary. For myself
+I have never regretted those details of Shakspeare's life which a
+Boswell of the time might have given us. But Cicero's personality
+as a man of letters seems especially to require elucidation. His
+letters lose their chief charm if the character of the man be not
+known, and the incidents of his life. His essays on
+rhetoric&mdash;the written lessons which he has left on the art of
+oratory&mdash;are a running commentary on his own career as an
+orator. Most of his speeches require for their understanding a
+knowledge of the circumstances of his life. The treatises which we
+know as his Philosophy&mdash;works which have been most wrongly
+represented by being grouped under that name&mdash;can only be read
+with advantage by the light of his own experience. There are two
+separate classes of his so-called Philosophy, in describing which
+the word philosophy, if it be used at all, must be made to bear two
+different senses. He handles in one set of treatises, not, I think,
+with his happiest efforts, the teaching of the old Greek schools.
+Such are the Tusculan Disquisitions, the Academics, and the De
+Finibus. From reading these, without reference to the
+idiosyncrasies of the writer, the student would be led to believe
+that Cicero himself was a philosopher after that sort. But he was,
+in truth, the last of men to lend his ears</p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+<div class="stanza"><span class="i0">"To those budge doctors of the
+stoic fur."</span></div>
+</div>
+
+<p>Cicero was a man thoroughly human in all his strength and all
+his weakness. To sit apart from the world and be happy amid scorn,
+poverty, and obscurity, with a mess of cabbage and a crust,
+absolutely contented with abstract virtue, has probably been given
+to no man; but of none has it been less within the reach than of
+Cicero. To him ginger was always hot in the mouth, whether it was
+the spice of politics, or of social delight, or of intellectual
+enterprise. When in his deep sorrow at the death of his daughter,
+when for a time the Republic <span class='pagenum'><a name=
+"Page_34" id="Page_34">34</a></span>was dead to him, and
+public and private life were equally black, he craved employment.
+Then he took down his Greek manuscripts and amused himself as best
+he might by writing this way or that. It was a matter on which his
+intellect could work and his energies be employed, though the
+theory of his life was in no way concerned in it. Such was one
+class of his Philosophy. The other consisted of a code of morals
+which he created for himself by his own convictions, formed on the
+world around him, and which displayed itself in essays, such as
+those De Officiis&mdash;on the duties of life; De Senectute, De
+Amicitia&mdash;on old age and friendship, and the like, which were
+not only intended for use, but are of use to any man or woman who
+will study them up to this day. There are others, treatises on law
+and on government and religion, which have all been lumped
+together, for the misguidance of school-boys, under the name of
+Cicero's Philosophy. But they, be they of one class or the other,
+require an understanding of the man's character before they can be
+enjoyed.</p>
+
+<p>For these reasons I think that there are incidents in the life,
+the character, and the work of Cicero which ought to make his
+biography interesting. His story is fraught with energy, with
+success, with pathos, and with tragedy. And then it is the story of
+a man human as men are now. No child of Rome ever better loved his
+country, but no child of Rome was ever so little like a Roman. Arms
+and battles were to him abominable, as they are to us. But arms and
+battles were the delight of Romans. He was ridiculed in his own
+time, and has been ridiculed ever since, for the alliterating twang
+of the line in which he declared his feeling:</p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+<div class="stanza"><span class="i0">"Cedant arma tog&aelig;; concedat
+laurea lingu&aelig;."</span></div>
+</div>
+
+<p>But the thing said was thoroughly good, and the better because
+the opinion was addressed to men among whom the glory of arms was
+still in ascendant over the achievements of <span class=
+'pagenum'><a name="Page_35" id="Page_35">
+35</a></span>intellectual enterprise. The greatest men have been
+those who have stepped out from the mass, and gone beyond their
+time&mdash;seeing things, with eyesight almost divine, which have
+hitherto been hidden from the crowd. Such was Columbus when he made
+his way across the Western Ocean; such were Galileo and Bacon; such
+was Pythagoras, if the ideas we have of him be at all true. Such
+also was Cicero. It is not given to the age in which such men live
+to know them. Could their age even recognize them, they would not
+overstep their age as they do. Looking back at him now, we can see
+how like a Christian was the man&mdash;so like, that in essentials
+we can hardly see the difference. He could love another as
+himself&mdash;as nearly as a man may do; and he taught such love as
+a doctrine.<a name="FNanchor_28_28" id="FNanchor_28_28"></a><a
+href="#Footnote_28_28" class="fnanchor">28</a> He believed in the
+existence of one supreme God.<a name="FNanchor_29_29" id=
+"FNanchor_29_29"></a><a href="#Footnote_29_29" class=
+"fnanchor">29</a> He believed that man would rise again and live
+forever in some heaven.<a name="FNanchor_30_30" id=
+"FNanchor_30_30"></a><a href="#Footnote_30_30" class=
+"fnanchor">30</a> I am conscious that I cannot much promote this
+view of Cicero's character by quoting isolated passages from his
+works&mdash;words which taken alone may be interpreted in one sense
+or another, and which should be read, each with its context, before
+their due meaning can be understood. But I may perhaps succeed in
+explaining to a reader what it is that I hope to do in the
+following pages, and why it is that I undertake a work which must
+be laborious, and for which many will think that there is no
+remaining need.</p>
+
+<p>I would not have it thought that, because I have so spoken of
+Cicero's aspirations and convictions, I intend to put him forth as
+a faultless personage in history. He was much too <span class=
+'pagenum'><a name="Page_36" id="Page_36">36</a></span>human to
+be perfect. Those who love the cold attitude of indifference may
+sing of Cato as perfect. Cicero was ambitious, and often
+unscrupulous in his ambition. He was a loving husband and a loving
+father; but at the end of his life he could quarrel with his old
+wife irrecoverably, and could idolize his daughter, while he ruined
+his son by indulgence. He was very great while he spoke of his
+country, which he did so often; but he was almost as little when he
+spoke of himself&mdash;which he did as often. In money-matters he
+was honest&mdash;for the times in which he lived, wonderfully
+honest; but in words he was not always equally trustworthy. He
+could flatter where he did not love. I admit that it was so, though
+I will not admit without a protest that the word insincere should
+be applied to him as describing his character generally. He was so
+much more sincere than others that the protest is needed. If a man
+stand but five feet eleven inches in his shoes, shall he be called
+a pygmy? And yet to declare that he measures full six feet would be
+untrue.</p>
+
+<p>Cicero was a busybody. Were there anything to do, he wished to
+do it, let it be what it might. "Cedant arma tog&aelig;." If anything
+was written on his heart, it was that. Yet he loved the idea of
+leading an army, and panted for a military triumph. Letters and
+literary life were dear to him, and yet he liked to think that he
+could live on equal terms with the young bloods of Rome, such as
+C&oelig;lius. As far as I can judge, he cared nothing for luxurious
+eating and drinking, and yet he wished to be reckoned among the
+gormands and gourmets of his times. He was so little like the
+"budge doctors of the stoic fur," of whom it was his delight to
+write when he had nothing else to do, that he could not bear any
+touch of adversity with equanimity. The stoic requires to be
+hardened against "the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune." It
+is his profession to be indifferent to the "whips and scorns of
+time." No man was less hardened, or more subject to suffering from
+scorns and whips. There be those who think proneness <span class=
+'pagenum'><a name="Page_37" id="Page_37">37</a></span>to such
+suffering is unmanly, or that the sufferer should at any rate hide
+his agony. Cicero did not. Whether of his glory or of his shame,
+whether of his joy or of his sorrow, whether of his love or of his
+hatred, whether of his hopes or of his despair, he spoke openly, as
+he did of all things. It has not been the way of heroes, as we read
+of them; but it is the way with men as we live with them.</p>
+
+<p>What a man he would have been for London life! How he would have
+enjoyed his club, picking up the news of the day from all lips,
+while he seemed to give it to all ears! How popular he would have
+been at the Carlton, and how men would have listened to him while
+every great or little crisis was discussed! How supreme he would
+have sat on the Treasury bench, or how unanswerable, how fatal, how
+joyous, when attacking the Government from the opposite seats! How
+crowded would have been his rack with invitations to dinner! How
+delighted would have been the middle-aged countesses of the time to
+hold with him mild intellectual flirtations&mdash;and the girls of
+the period, how proud to get his autograph, how much prouder to
+have touched the lips of the great orator with theirs! How the
+pages of the magazines would have run over with little essays from
+his pen! "Have you seen our Cicero's paper on agriculture? That
+lucky fellow, Editor &mdash;&mdash;, got him to do it last month!" "Of
+course you have read Cicero's article on the soul. The bishops
+don't know which way to turn." "So the political article in the
+<i>Quarterly</i> is Cicero's?" "Of course you know the
+art-criticism in the <i>Times</i> this year is Tully's doing?" But
+that would probably be a bounce. And then what letters he would
+write! With the penny-post instead of travelling messengers at his
+command, and pen instead of wax and sticks, or perhaps with an
+instrument-writer and a private secretary, he would have answered
+all questions and solved all difficulties. He would have so
+abounded with intellectual fertility that men would not have known
+whether most to admire his powers of expression or to deprecate his
+want of reticence.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_38" id="Page_38">
+38</a></span>There will necessarily be much to be said of Cicero's
+writings in the following pages, as it is my object to delineate
+the literary man as well as the politician. In doing this, there
+arises a difficulty as to the sequence in which his works should be
+taken. It will hardly suit the purpose in view to speak of them all
+either chronologically or separately as to their subjects. The
+speeches and the letters clearly require the former treatment as
+applying each to the very moment of time at which they were either
+spoken or written. His treatises, whether on rhetoric or on the
+Greek philosophy, or on government, or on morals, can best be taken
+apart as belonging in a very small degree, if at all, to the period
+in which they were written. I will therefore endeavor to introduce
+the orations and letters as the periods may suit, and to treat of
+his essays afterward by themselves.</p>
+
+<p>A few words I must say as to the Roman names I have used in my
+narrative. There is a difficulty in this respect, because the
+practice of my boyhood has partially changed itself. Pompey used to
+be Pompey without a blush. Now with an erudite English writer he is
+generally Pompeius. The denizens of Africa&mdash;the "nigger"
+world&mdash;have had, I think, something to do with this. But with
+no erudite English writer is Terence Terentius, or Virgil
+Virgilius, or Horace Horatius. Were I to speak of Livius, the
+erudite English listener would think that I alluded to an old
+author long prior to our dear historian. And though we now talk of
+Sulla instead of Sylla, we hardly venture on Antonius instead of
+Antony. Considering all this, I have thought it better to cling to
+the sounds which have ever been familiar to myself; and as I talk
+of Virgil and of Horace and Ovid freely and without fear, so shall
+I speak also of Pompey and of Antony and of Catiline. In regard to
+Sulla, the change has been so complete that I must allow the old
+name to have re-established itself altogether.</p>
+
+<p>It has been customary to notify the division of years in the
+period of which I am about to write by dating from two different
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_39" id="Page_39">
+39</a></span>eras, counting down from the building of Rome,
+A.U.C., or "anno urbis condit&aelig;," and back from the birth of
+Christ, which we English mark by the letters <span class=
+"smcap">b.c.</span>, before Christ. In dealing with Cicero, writers
+(both French and English) have not uncommonly added a third mode of
+dating, assigning his doings or sayings to the year of his age.
+There is again a fourth mode, common among the Romans, of
+indicating the special years by naming the Consuls, or one of them.
+"O nata mecum consule Manlio," Horace says, when addressing his
+cask of wine. That was, indeed, the official mode of indicating a
+date, and may probably be taken as showing how strong the
+impression in the Roman mind was of the succession of their
+Consuls. In the following pages I will use generally the date <span
+class="smcap">b.c.</span>, which, though perhaps less simple than
+the A.U.C., gives to the mind of the modern reader a clearer idea
+of the juxtaposition of events. The reader will surely know that
+Christ was born in the reign of Augustus, and crucified in that of
+Tiberius; but he will not perhaps know, without the trouble of some
+calculation, how far removed from the period of Christ was the year
+648 A.U.C., in which Cicero was born. To this I will add on the
+margin the year of Cicero's life. He was nearly sixty-four when he
+died. I shall, therefore, call that year his sixty-third year.</p>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_40" id="Page_40">
+40</a></span></p>
+
+<h3><a name="CHAPTER_II" id="CHAPTER_II"></a><span class="smcap">Chapter II.</span></h3>
+
+<h4><i>HIS EDUCATION.</i></h4>
+
+<p>At Arpinum, on the river Liris, a little stream which has been
+made to sound sweetly in our ears by Horace,<a name=
+"FNanchor_31_31" id="FNanchor_31_31"></a><a href="#Footnote_31_31"
+class="fnanchor">31</a> in a villa residence near the town,
+Marcus Tullius Cicero was born, 106 years before Christ, on the 3d
+of January, according to the calendar then in use. Pompey the Great
+was born in the same year. Arpinum was a State which had been
+admitted into Roman citizenship, lying between Rome and Capua, just
+within that portion of Italy which was till the other day called
+the Kingdom of Naples. The district from which he came is noted,
+also, as having given birth to Marius. Cicero was of an equestrian
+family, which means as much as though we were to say among
+ourselves that a man had been born a gentleman and nothing more. An
+"eques" or knight in Cicero's time became so, or might become so,
+by being in possession of a certain income. The title conferred no
+nobility. The plebeian, it will be understood, could not become
+patrician, though he might become noble&mdash;as Cicero did. The
+patrician must have been born so&mdash;must have sprung from the
+purple of certain fixed families.<a name="FNanchor_32_32" id=
+"FNanchor_32_32"></a><a href="#Footnote_32_32" class=
+"fnanchor">32</a> Cicero was born a plebeian, of equestrian <span
+class='pagenum'><a name="Page_41" id="Page_41">
+41</a></span>rank and became ennobled when he was ranked among the
+senators because of his service among the high magistrates of the
+Republic. As none of his family had served before him, he was
+"novus homo," a new man, and therefore not noble till he had
+achieved nobility himself. A man was noble who could reckon a
+Consul, a Pr&aelig;tor, or an &AElig;dile among his ancestors. Such was not
+the case with Cicero. As he filled all these offices, his son was
+noble&mdash;as were his son's sons and grandsons, if such there
+were.</p>
+
+<p>It was common to Romans to have three names, and our Cicero had
+three. Marcus, which was similar in its use to the Christian name
+of one of us, had been that of his grandfather and father, and was
+handed on to his son. This, called the pr&aelig;nomen, was conferred on
+the child when a babe with a ceremony not unlike that of our
+baptism. There was but a limited choice of such names among the
+Romans, so that an initial letter will generally declare to those
+accustomed to the literature that intended. A. stands for Aulus, P.
+for Publius, M. generally for Marcus, C. for Caius, though there
+was a Cneus also. The nomen, Tullius, was that of the family. Of
+this family of Tullius to which Cicero belonged we know no details.
+Plutarch tells us that of his father nothing was said but in
+extremes, some declaring that he had been a fuller, and others that
+he had been descended from a prince who had governed the Volsci. We
+do not see why he may not have sprung from the prince, and also
+have been a fuller. There can, however, be no doubt that he was a
+gentleman, not uneducated himself, with means and the desire to
+give his children the best education which Rome or Greece afforded.
+The third name or cognomen, that of Cicero, belonged to a branch of
+the family of Tullius. This third name had generally its origin, as
+do so many of our surnames, in some specialty of place, or trade,
+or chance circumstance. It was said that an ancestor had been
+called Cicero from "cicer," a vetch, because his nose was marked
+with the figure of that vegetable. It is <span class='pagenum'><a
+name="Page_42" id="Page_42">42</a></span>more probable that
+the family prospered by the growing and sale of vetches. Be that as
+it may, the name had been well established before the orator's
+time. Cicero's mother was one Helvia, of whom we are told that she
+was well-born and rich. Cicero himself never alludes to
+her&mdash;as neither, if I remember rightly, did Horace to his
+mother, though he speaks so frequently of his father. Helvia's
+younger son, Quintus, tells a story of his mother in a letter,
+which has been, by chance, preserved among those written by our
+Cicero. She was in the habit of sealing up the empty wine-jars, as
+well as those which were full, so that a jar emptied on the sly by
+a guzzling slave might be at once known. This is told in a letter
+to Tiro, a favorite slave belonging to Marcus, of whom we shall
+hear often in the course of our work. As the old lady sealed up the
+jars, though they contained no wine, so must Tiro write letters,
+though he has nothing to say in them. This kind of argument, taken
+from the old familiar stories of one's childhood and one's parents,
+could be only used to a dear and familiar friend. Such was Tiro,
+though still a slave, to the two brothers. Roman life admitted of
+such friendships, though the slave was so completely the creature
+of the master that his life and death were at the master's
+disposal. This is nearly all that is known of Cicero's father and
+mother, or of his old home.</p>
+
+<p>There is, however, sufficient evidence that the father paid
+great attention to the education of his sons&mdash;if, in the case
+of Marcus, any evidence were wanting where the result is so
+manifest by the work of his life. At a very early age, probably
+when he was eight&mdash;in the year which produced Julius
+C&aelig;sar&mdash;he was sent to Rome, and there was devoted to
+studies which from the first were intended to fit him for public
+life. Middleton says that the father lived in Rome with his son,
+and argues from this that he was a man of large means. But Cicero
+gives no authority for this. It is more probable that he lived at
+the house of one Aculeo, who had married his <span class=
+'pagenum'><a name="Page_43" id="Page_43">43</a></span>mother's
+sister, and had sons with whom Cicero was educated. Stories are
+told of his precocious talents and performances such as we are
+accustomed to hear of many remarkable men&mdash;not unfrequently
+from their own mouths. It is said of him that he was intimate with
+the two great advocates of the time, Lucius Crassus and Marcus
+Antonius the orator, the grandfather of Cicero's future enemy, whom
+we know as Marc Antony. Cicero speaks of them both as though he had
+seen them and talked much of them in his youth. He tells us
+anecdotes of them;<a name="FNanchor_33_33" id=
+"FNanchor_33_33"></a><a href="#Footnote_33_33" class=
+"fnanchor">33</a> how they were both accustomed to conceal their
+knowledge of Greek, fancying that the people in whose eyes they
+were anxious to shine would think more of them if they seemed to
+have contented themselves simply with Roman words and Roman
+thoughts. But the intimacy was probably that which a lad now is apt
+to feel that he has enjoyed with a great man, if he has seen and
+heard him, and perhaps been taken by the hand. He himself gives in
+very plain language an account of his own studies when he was
+seventeen, eighteen, and nineteen. He speaks of the orators of that
+day<a name="FNanchor_34_34" id="FNanchor_34_34"></a><a href=
+"#Footnote_34_34" class="fnanchor">34</a>: "When I was above all
+things anxious to listen to these men, the banishment of Cotta was
+a great sorrow to me. I was passionately intent on hearing those
+who were left, daily writing, reading, and making notes. Nor was I
+content only with practice in the art of speaking. In the following
+year Varius had to go, condemned by his own enactment; and at this
+time, in working at the civil law, I gave much of my time to
+Quintus Sc&aelig;vola, the son of Publius, who, though he took no
+pupils, by explaining points to those who consulted him, gave great
+assistance to students. The year after, when Sulla and Pompey were
+Consuls, I learned what oratory really means by listening to
+Publius Sulpicius, who as tribune was daily making harangues. It
+was then that Philo, the Chief of the Academy, with other leading
+philosophers of Athens, had been put to <span class='pagenum'><a
+name="Page_44" id="Page_44">44</a></span>flight by the war
+with Mithridates, and had come to Rome. To him I devoted myself
+entirely, stirred up by a wonderful appetite for acquiring the
+Greek philosophy. But in that, though the variety of the pursuit
+and its greatness charmed me altogether, yet it seemed to me that
+the very essence of judicial conclusion was altogether suppressed.
+In that year Sulpicius perished, and in the next, three of our
+greatest orators, Quintus Catulus, Marcus Antonius, and Caius
+Julius, were cruelly killed." This was the time of the civil war
+between Marius and Sulla. "In the same year I took lessons from
+Molo the Rhodian, a great pleader and master of the art." In the
+next chapter he tells us that he passed his time also with Diodatus
+the Stoic, who afterward lived with him, and died in his house.
+Here we have an authentic description of the manner in which Cicero
+passed his time as a youth at Rome, and one we can reduce probably
+to absolute truth by lessening the superlatives. Nothing in it,
+however, is more remarkable than the confession that, while his
+young intellect rejoiced in the subtle argumentation of the Greek
+philosophers, his clear common sense quarrelled with their
+inability to reach any positive conclusion.</p>
+
+<p>But before these days of real study had come upon him he had
+given himself up to juvenile poetry. He is said to have written a
+poem called Pontius Glaucus when he was fourteen years old. This
+was no doubt a translation from the Greek, as were most of the
+poems that he wrote, and many portions of his prose treatises.<a
+name="FNanchor_35_35" id="FNanchor_35_35"></a><a href=
+"#Footnote_35_35" class="fnanchor">35</a> Plutarch tells us that
+the poem was <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_45" id=
+"Page_45">45</a></span>extant in his time, and declares that,
+"in process of time, when he had studied this art with greater
+application, he was looked upon as the best poet, as well as the
+greatest orator in Rome." The English translators of Plutarch tell
+us that their author was an indifferent judge of Latin poetry, and
+allege as proof of this that he praised Cicero as a poet, a praise
+which he gave "contrary to the opinion of Juvenal." But Juvenal has
+given no opinion of Cicero's poetry, having simply quoted one
+unfortunate line noted for its egotism, and declared that Cicero
+would never have had his head cut off had his philippics been of
+the same nature.<a name="FNanchor_36_36" id="FNanchor_36_36"></a><a
+href="#Footnote_36_36" class="fnanchor">36</a> The evidence of
+Quintus Mucius Sc&aelig;vola as to Cicero's poetry was perhaps better,
+as he had the means, at any rate, of reading it. He believed that
+the Marius, a poem written by Cicero in praise of his great
+fellow-townsman, would live to posterity forever. The story of the
+old man's prophecy comes to us, no doubt, from Cicero himself, and
+is put into the mouth of his brother;<a name="FNanchor_37_37" id=
+"FNanchor_37_37"></a><a href="#Footnote_37_37" class=
+"fnanchor">37</a> but had it been untrue it would have been
+contradicted.</p>
+
+<p>The Glaucus was a translation from the Greek done by a boy,
+probably as a boy's lesson It is not uncommon that such exercises
+should be treasured by parents, or perhaps by the performer
+himself, and not impossible that they should be made to reappear
+afterward as original compositions. Lord Brougham tells us in his
+autobiography that in his early youth he tried his hand at writing
+English essays, and even tales of fiction.<a name="FNanchor_38_38"
+id="FNanchor_38_38"></a><a href="#Footnote_38_38" class=
+"fnanchor">38</a> "I find one of these," he says, "has survived
+the waste-paper <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_46" id=
+"Page_46">46</a></span>basket, and it may amuse my readers to
+see the sort of composition I was guilty of at the age of thirteen.
+My tale was entitled 'Memnon, or Human Wisdom,' and is as follows."
+Then we have a fair translation of Voltaire's romance, "Memnon," or
+"La Sagesse Humaine." The old lord, when he was collecting his
+papers for his autobiography, had altogether forgotten his
+Voltaire, and thought that he had composed the story! Nothing so
+absurd as that is told of Cicero by himself or on his behalf.</p>
+
+<p>It may be as well to say here what there may be to be said as to
+Cicero's poetry generally. But little of it remains to us, and by
+that little it has been admitted that he has not achieved the name
+of a great poet; but what he did was too great in extent and too
+good in its nature to be passed over altogether without notice. It
+has been his fate to be rather ridiculed than read as a maker of
+verses, and that ridicule has come from two lines which I have
+already quoted. The longest piece which we have is from the
+Ph&aelig;nomena of Aratus, which he translated from the Greek when he
+was eighteen years old, and which describes the heavenly bodies. It
+is known to us best by the extracts from it given by the author
+himself in his treatise, De Natur&acirc; Deorum. It must be owned
+that it is not pleasant reading. But translated poetry seldom is
+pleasant, and could hardly be made so on such a subject by a boy of
+eighteen. The Marius was written two years after this, and we have
+a passage from it, quoted by the author in his De Divinatione,
+containing some fine lines. It tells the story of the battle of the
+eagle and the serpent. Cicero took it, no doubt (not translated it,
+however), from the passage in the Iliad, lib, xii, 200, which has
+been rendered by Pope with less than his usual fire, and by Lord
+Derby with no peculiar charm. Virgil has reproduced the picture
+with his own peculiar grace of words. His version has been
+translated by Dryden, but better, perhaps, by Christopher Pitt.
+Voltaire has translated Cicero's lines with great power, and
+Shelley has reproduced the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_47"
+id="Page_47">47</a></span>same idea at much greater length in
+the first canto of the Revolt of Islam, taking it probably from
+Cicero, but, if not, from Voltaire.<a name="FNanchor_39_39" id=
+"FNanchor_39_39"></a><a href="#Footnote_39_39" class=
+"fnanchor">39</a> I venture to think that, of the nine versions,
+Cicero's is the best, and that it is the most melodious piece of
+Latin poetry we have up to that date. Twenty-seven years afterward,
+when Lucretius was probably at work on his great poem, Cicero wrote
+an account of his consulship in verse. Of this we have fifty or
+sixty lines, in which the author describes the heavenly warnings
+which were given as to the affairs of his own consular year. The
+story is not a happy one, but the lines are harmonious. It is often
+worth our while to inquire how poetry has become such as it is, and
+how the altered and improved phases of versification have arisen.
+To trace our melody from Chaucer to Tennyson is matter of interest
+to us all. Of Cicero as a poet we may say that he found Latin
+versification rough, and left it smooth and musical. Now, as we go
+on with the orator's life and prose works, we need not return to
+his poetry.</p>
+
+<p>The names of many masters have been given to us as those under
+whom Cicero's education was carried on. Among others he is
+supposed, at a very early age, to have been confided to Archias.
+Archias was a Greek, born at Antioch, who devoted himself to
+letters, and, if we are to believe what Cicero says, when speaking
+as an advocate, excelled all his rivals of the day. Like many other
+educated Greeks, he made his way to Rome, and was received as one
+of the household of Lucullus, with whom he travelled, accompanying
+him even to the wars. He became a citizen of Rome&mdash;so Cicero
+assures us&mdash;and Cicero's tutor. What Cicero owed to him we do
+not know, but to Cicero Archias owed immortality. His claim to
+citizenship was disputed; and Cicero, pleading on his behalf, <span
+class='pagenum'><a name="Page_48" id="Page_48">
+48</a></span>made one of those shorter speeches which are perfect
+in melody, in taste, and in language. There is a passage in which
+speaking on behalf of so excellent a professor in the art, he sings
+the praises of literature generally. I know no words written in
+praise of books more persuasive or more valuable. "Other
+recreations," he says, "do not belong to all seasons nor to all
+ages, nor to all places. These pursuits nourish our youth and
+delight our old age. They adorn our prosperity and give a refuge
+and a solace to our troubles. They charm us at home, and they are
+not in our way when we are abroad. They go to bed with us. They
+travel about with us. They accompany us as we escape into the
+country."<a name="FNanchor_40_40" id="FNanchor_40_40"></a><a href=
+"#Footnote_40_40" class="fnanchor">40</a> Archias probably did
+something for him in directing his taste, and has been rewarded
+thus richly. As to other lessons, we know that he was instructed in
+law by Sc&aelig;vola, and he has told us that he listened to Crassus and
+Antony. At sixteen he went through the ceremony of putting off his
+boy's dress, the toga pr&aelig;texta, and appearing in the toga virilis
+before the Pr&aelig;tor, thus assuming his right to go about a man's
+business. At sixteen the work of education was <i>not</i>
+finished&mdash;no more than it is with us when a lad at Oxford
+becomes "of age" at twenty-one; nor was he put beyond his father's
+power, the "patria potestas," from which no age availed to liberate
+a son; but, nevertheless, it was a very joyful ceremony, and was
+duly performed by Cicero in the midst of his studies with
+Sc&aelig;vola.</p>
+
+<p>At eighteen he joined the army. That doctrine of the division of
+labor which now, with us, runs through and dominates all pursuits,
+had not as yet been made plain to the minds of men at Rome by the
+political economists of the day. It was well that a man should know
+something of many things&mdash;that he should especially, if he
+intended to be a leader of men, be both soldier and orator. To rise
+to be Consul, having first been Qu&aelig;stor, &AElig;dile, and Pr&aelig;tor, was
+the path of <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_49" id=
+"Page_49">49</a></span>glory. It had been the special duty of
+the Consuls of Rome, since the establishment of consular
+government, to lead the armies of the Republic. A portion of the
+duty devolved upon the Pr&aelig;tors, as wars became more numerous; and
+latterly the commanders were attended by Qu&aelig;stors. The Governors
+of the provinces, Proconsuls, or Propr&aelig;tors with proconsular
+authority, always combined military with civil authority. The art
+of war was, therefore, a necessary part of the education of a man
+intended to rise in the service of the State. Cicero, though, in
+his endeavor to follow his own tastes, he made a strong effort to
+keep himself free from such work, and to remain at Rome instead of
+being sent abroad as a Governor, had at last to go where fighting
+was in some degree necessary, and, in the saddest phase of his
+life, appeared in Italy with his lictors, demanding the honors of a
+triumph. In anticipation of such a career, no doubt under the
+advice of his friends, he now went out to see, if not a battle,
+something, at any rate, of war. It has already been said how the
+citizenship of Rome was conferred on some of the small Italian
+States around, and not on others. Hence, of course, arose jealousy,
+which was increased by the feeling on the part of those excluded
+that they were called to furnish soldiers to Rome, as well as those
+who were included. Then there was formed a combination of Italian
+cities, sworn to remedy the injury thus inflicted on them. Their
+purpose was to fight Rome in order that they might achieve Roman
+citizenship; and hence arose the first civil war which distracted
+the Empire. Pompeius Strabo, father of Pompey the Great, was then
+Consul (<span class="smcap">b.c.</span> 89), and Cicero was sent
+out to see the campaign under him. Marius and Sulla, the two Romans
+who were destined soon to bathe Rome in blood, had not yet
+quarrelled, though they had been brought to hate each
+other&mdash;Marius by jealousy, and Sulla by rivalry. In this war
+they both served under the Consuls, and Cicero served with Sulla.
+We know nothing of his doings in that campaign. There are no
+tidings even of a misfortune such as <span class='pagenum'><a name=
+"Page_50" id="Page_50">50</a></span>that which happened to
+Horace when he went out to fight, and came home from the
+battle-field "relicta non bene parmula."</p>
+
+<p>Rome trampled on the rebellious cities, and in the end admitted
+them to citizenship. But probably the most important, certainly the
+most notorious, result of the Italian war, was the deep antagonism
+of Marius and Sulla. Sulla had made himself conspicuous by his
+fortune on the occasion, whereas Marius, who had become the great
+soldier of the Republic, and had been six times Consul, failed to
+gather fresh laurels. Rome was falling into that state of anarchy
+which was the cause of all the glory and all the disgrace of
+Cicero's life, and was open to the dominion of any soldier whose
+grasp might be the least scrupulous and the strongest. Marius,
+after a series of romantic adventures with which we must not
+connect ourselves here, was triumphant only just before his death,
+while Sulla went off with his army, pillaged Athens, plundered Asia
+Minor generally, and made terms with Mithridates, though he did not
+conquer him. With the purport, no doubt, of conquering Mithridates,
+but perhaps with the stronger object of getting him out of Rome,
+the army had been intrusted to him, with the consent of the Marian
+faction.</p>
+
+<p>Then came those three years, when Sulla was in the East and
+Marius dead, of which Cicero speaks as a period of peace, in which
+a student was able to study in Rome. "Triennium fere fuit urbs sine
+armis."<a name="FNanchor_41_41" id="FNanchor_41_41"></a><a href=
+"#Footnote_41_41" class="fnanchor">41</a> These must have been
+the years 86, 85, and 84 before Christ, when Cicero was twenty-one,
+twenty-two, and twenty-three years old; and it was this period, in
+truth, of which he speaks, and not of earlier years, when he tells
+us of his studies with Philo, and Molo, and Diodatus. Precocious as
+he was in literature, writing one poem&mdash;or translating
+it&mdash;when he was fourteen, and another when he was eighteen, he
+was by no means in a hurry to commence the work of his life. He is
+said also to have written a treatise on <span class='pagenum'><a
+name="Page_51" id="Page_51">51</a></span>military tactics when
+he was nineteen; which again, no doubt, means that he had exercised
+himself by translating such an essay from the Greek. This, happily,
+does not remain. But we have four books, Rhetoricorum ad C.
+Herennium, and two books De Inventione, attributed to his twentieth
+and twenty-first years, which are published with his works, and
+commence the series. Of all that we have from him, they are perhaps
+the least worth reading; but as they are, or were, among his
+recognized writings, a word shall be said of them in their proper
+place.</p>
+
+<p>The success of the education of Cicero probably became a
+commonplace among Latin school-masters and Latin writers. In the
+dialogue De Oratoribus, attributed to Tacitus, the story of it is
+given by Messala when he is praising the orators of the earlier
+age. "We know well," says Messala, "that book of Cicero which is
+called Brutus, in the latter part of which he describes to us the
+beginning and the progress of his own eloquence, and, as it were,
+the bringing up on which it was founded. He tells us that he had
+learned civil law under Q. Mutius Sc&aelig;vola; that he had exhausted
+the realm of philosophy&mdash;learning that of the Academy under
+Philo, and that of the Stoics under Diodatus; that, not content
+with these treatises, he had travelled through Greece and Asia, so
+as to embrace the whole world of art. And thus it had come about
+that in the works of Cicero no knowledge is wanting&mdash;neither
+of music, nor of grammar, nor any other liberal accomplishment. He
+understood the subtilty of logic, the purpose of ethics, the
+effects and causes of things." Then the speaker goes on to explain
+what may be expected from study such as that. "Thus it is, my good
+friends&mdash;thus, that from the acquirement of many arts, and
+from a general knowledge of all things, eloquence that is truly
+admirable is created in its full force; for the power and capacity
+of an orator need not be hemmed in, as are those of other callings,
+by certain narrow bounds; but that man is the true orator who is
+able to speak <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_52" id=
+"Page_52">52</a></span>on all subjects with dignity and grace,
+so as to persuade those who listen, and to delight them, in a
+manner suited to the nature of the subject in hand and the
+convenience of the time."<a name="FNanchor_42_42" id=
+"FNanchor_42_42"></a><a href="#Footnote_42_42" class=
+"fnanchor">42</a></p>
+
+<p>We might fancy that we were reading words from Cicero himself!
+Then the speaker in this imaginary conversation goes on to tell us
+how far matters had derogated in his time, pointing out at the same
+time that the evils which he deplores had shown themselves even
+before Cicero, but had been put down, as far as the law could put
+them down, by its interference. He is speaking of those schools of
+rhetoric in which Greek professors of the art gave lessons for
+money, which were evil in their nature, and not, as it appears,
+efficacious even for the purpose in hand. "But now," continues
+Messala, "our very boys are brought into the schools of those
+lecturers who are called 'rhetores,' who had sprung up before
+Cicero, to the displeasure of our ancestors, as is evident from the
+fact that when Crassus and Domitius were Censors they were ordered
+to shut up their school of impudence, as Cicero calls it. Our boys,
+as I was going to say, are taken to these lecture-rooms, in which
+it is hard to say whether the atmosphere of the place, or the lads
+they are thrown among, or the nature of the lessons taught, are the
+most injurious. In the place itself there is neither discipline nor
+respect. All who go there are equally ignorant. The boys among the
+boys, the lads among the lads, utter and listen to just what words
+they please. Their very exercises are, for the most part, useless.
+Two kinds are in vogue with these 'rhetores,' called 'suasori&aelig;'
+and 'controversi&aelig;,'" tending, we may perhaps say, to persuade or
+to refute. "Of these, the 'suasori&aelig;,' as being the lighter and
+requiring less of experience, are given to the little boys, the
+'controversi&aelig;' to the bigger lads. But&mdash;oh heavens, what they
+are&mdash;what miserable compositions!" Then he tells us the
+subjects <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_53" id="Page_53">
+53</a></span>selected. Rape, incest, and other horrors are
+subjected to the lads for their declamation, in order that they may
+learn to be orators.</p>
+
+<p>Messala then explains that in those latter days&mdash;his days,
+that is&mdash;under the rule of despotic princes, truly large
+subjects are not allowed to be discussed in
+public&mdash;confessing, however, that those large subjects, though
+they afford fine opportunities to orators, are not beneficial to
+the State at large. But it was thus, he says, that Cicero became
+what he was, who would not have grown into favor had he defended
+only P. Quintius and Archias, and had had nothing to do with
+Catiline, or Milo, or Verres, or Antony&mdash;showing, by-the-way,
+how great was the reputation of that speech, Pro Milone, with which
+we shall have to deal farther on.</p>
+
+<p>The treatise becomes somewhat confused, a portion of it having
+probably been lost. From whose mouth the last words are supposed to
+come is not apparent. It ends with a rhapsody in favor of imperial
+government&mdash;suitable, indeed, to the time of Domitian, but
+very unlike Tacitus. While, however, it praises despotism, it
+declares that only by the evils which despotism had quelled could
+eloquence be maintained. "Our country, indeed, while it was astray
+in its government; while it tore itself to pieces by parties and
+quarrels and discord; while there was no peace in the Forum, no
+agreement in the Senate, no moderation on the judgment-seat, no
+reverence for letters, no control among the magistrates, boasted,
+no doubt, a stronger eloquence."</p>
+
+<p>From what we are thus told of Cicero, not what we hear from
+himself, we are able to form an idea of the nature of his
+education. With his mind fixed from his early days on the ambition
+of doing something noble with himself, he gave himself up to all
+kinds of learning. It was Macaulay, I think, who said of him that
+the idea of conquering the "omne scibile,"&mdash;the understanding of
+all things within the reach of human intellect&mdash;was before his
+eyes as it was before those <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_54"
+id="Page_54">54</a></span>of Bacon. The special preparation
+which was, in Cicero's time, employed for students at the bar is
+also described in the treatise from which I have quoted&mdash;the
+preparation which is supposed to have been the very opposite of
+that afforded by the "rhetores." "Among ourselves, the youth who
+was intended to achieve eloquence in the Forum, when already
+trained at home and exercised in classical knowledge, was brought
+by his father or his friends to that orator who might then be
+considered to be the leading man in the city. It became his daily
+work to follow that man, to accompany him, to be conversant with
+all his speeches, whether in the courts of law or at public
+meetings, so that he might learn, if I might say so, to fight in
+the very thick of the throng." It was thus that Cicero studied his
+art. A few lines farther down, the pseudo-Tacitus tells us that
+Crassus, in his nineteenth year, held a brief against Carbo; that
+C&aelig;sar did so in his twenty-first against Dolabella; and
+Pollio, in his twenty-second year, against Cato.<a name=
+"FNanchor_43_43" id="FNanchor_43_43"></a><a href="#Footnote_43_43"
+class="fnanchor">43</a> In this precocity Cicero did not imitate
+Crassus, or show an example to the Romans who followed him. He was
+twenty-six when he pleaded his first cause. Sulla had then
+succeeded in crushing the Marian faction, and the Sullan
+proscriptions had taken place, and were nominally over. Sulla had
+been declared Dictator, and had proclaimed that there should be no
+more selections for death. The Republic was supposed to be
+restored. "Recuperata republica * * * tum primum nos ad
+causas et privatas et publicas adire c&oelig;pimus,"<a name=
+"FNanchor_44_44" id="FNanchor_44_44"></a><a href="#Footnote_44_44"
+class="fnanchor">44</a> "The Republic having been restored, I
+then first applied myself to pleadings, both private and
+public."</p>
+
+<p>Of Cicero's politics at that time we are enabled to form a <span
+class='pagenum'><a name="Page_55" id="Page_55">
+55</a></span>fair judgment. Marius had been his townsman; Sulla
+had been his captain. But the one thing dear to him was the
+Republic&mdash;what he thought to be the Republic. He was neither
+Marian nor Sullan. The turbulence in which so much noble blood had
+flowed&mdash;the "crudelis interitus oratorum," the crushing out of
+the old legalized form of government&mdash;was abominable to him.
+It was his hope, no doubt his expectation, that these old forms
+should be restored in all their power. There seemed to be more
+probability of this&mdash;there was more probability of it&mdash;on
+the side of Sulla than the other. On Sulla's side was Pompey, the
+then rising man, who, being of the same age with Cicero, had
+already pushed himself into prominence, who was surnamed the Great,
+and who "triumphed" during these very two years in which Cicero
+began his career; who through Cicero's whole life was his bugbear,
+his stumbling-block, and his mistake. But on that side were the
+"optimates," the men who, if they did not lead, ought to lead the
+Republic; those who, if they were not respectable, ought to be so;
+those who, if they did not love their country, ought to love it. If
+there was a hope, it was with them. The old state of
+things&mdash;that oligarchy which has been called a
+Republic&mdash;had made Rome what it was; had produced power,
+civilization, art, and literature. It had enabled such a one as
+Cicero was himself to aspire to lead, though he had been humbly
+born, and had come to Rome from an untried provincial family. To
+him the Republic&mdash;as he fancied that it had been, as he
+fancied that it might be&mdash;was all that was good, all that was
+gracious, all that was beneficent. On Sulla's side lay what chance
+there was of returning to the old ways. When Sulla was declared
+Dictator, it was presumed that the Republic was restored. But not
+on this account should it be supposed that Cicero regarded the
+proscriptions of Sulla with favor, or that he was otherwise than
+shocked by the wholesale robberies for which the proscription paved
+the way. This is a matter with which it will be necessary to deal
+more fully when we come <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_56" id=
+"Page_56">56</a></span>in our next chapter to the first
+speeches made by Cicero; in the very first of which, as I place
+them, he attacks the Sullan robberies with an audacity which, when
+we remember that Sulla was still in power, rescues, at any rate, in
+regard to this period of his life, the character of the orator from
+that charge of cowardice which has been imputed to him.</p>
+
+<p>It is necessary here, in this chapter devoted to the education
+of Cicero, to allude to his two first speeches, because that
+education was not completed till afterward&mdash;so that they may
+be regarded as experiments, or trials, as it were, of his force and
+sufficiency. "Not content with these teachers"&mdash;teachers who
+had come to Rome from Greece and Asia&mdash;"he had travelled
+through Greece and Asia, so as to embrace the whole world of art."
+These words, quoted a few pages back from the treatise attributed
+to Tacitus, refer to a passage in the Brutus in which Cicero makes
+a statement to that effect. "When I reached Athens,<a name=
+"FNanchor_45_45" id="FNanchor_45_45"></a><a href="#Footnote_45_45"
+class="fnanchor">45</a> I passed six months with Antiochus, by
+far the best known and most erudite of the teachers of the old
+Academy, and with him, as my great authority and master, I renewed
+that study of philosophy which I had never abandoned&mdash;which
+from my boyhood I had followed with always increasing success. At
+the same time I practised oratory laboriously with Demetrius Syrus,
+also at Athens, a well-known and by no means incapable master of
+the art of speaking. After that I wandered over all Asia, and came
+across the best orators there, with whom I practised, enjoying
+their willing assistance." There is more of it, which need not be
+repeated verbatim, giving the names of those who aided him in Asia:
+Menippus of Stratonice&mdash;who, he says, was sweet enough to have
+belonged himself to Athens&mdash;with Dionysius of Magnesia, with
+&OElig;schilus of Cnidos, and with Xenocles of Adramyttium. Then at
+Rhodes he came across his old friend Molo, and applied himself
+again to the teaching of his former master. <span class=
+'pagenum'><a name="Page_57" id="Page_57">
+57</a></span>Quintilian explains to us how this was done with a
+purpose, so that the young orator, when he had made a first attempt
+with his half-fledged wings in the courts, might go back to his
+masters for awhile<a name="FNanchor_46_46" id=
+"FNanchor_46_46"></a><a href="#Footnote_46_46" class=
+"fnanchor">46</a>.</p>
+
+<p>He was twenty-eight when he started on this tour. It has been
+suggested that he did so in fear of the resentment of Sulla, with
+whose favorites and with whose practices he had dealt very plainly.
+There is no reason for alleging this, except that Sulla was
+powerful, that Sulla was blood-thirsty, and that Sulla must have
+been offended. This kind of argument is often used. It is supposed
+to be natural, or at least probable, that in a certain position a
+man should have been a coward or a knave, ungrateful or cruel; and
+in the presumption thus raised the accusation is brought against
+him. "Fearing Sulla's resentment," Plutarch says, "he travelled
+into Greece, and gave out that the recovery of his health was the
+motive." There is no evidence that such was his reason for
+travelling; and, as Middleton says in his behalf, it is certain
+that he "continued for a year after this in Rome without any
+apprehension of danger." It is best to take a man's own account of
+his own doings and their causes, unless there be ground for
+doubting the statement made. It is thus that Cicero himself speaks
+of his journey: "Now," he says, still in his Brutus<a name=
+"FNanchor_47_47" id="FNanchor_47_47"></a><a href="#Footnote_47_47"
+class="fnanchor">47</a>, "as you wish to know what I am&mdash;not
+simply what mark I may have on my body from my birth, or with what
+surroundings of childhood I was brought up&mdash;I will include
+some details which might perhaps seem hardly necessary. At this
+time I was thin and weak, my neck being long and narrow&mdash;a
+habit and form of body which is supposed to be adverse to long
+life; <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_58" id="Page_58">
+58</a></span>and those who loved me thought the more of this,
+because I had taken to speaking without relaxation, without
+recreation with all the powers of my voice, and with much muscular
+action. When my friends and the doctors desired me to give up
+speaking, I resolved that, rather than abandon my career as an
+orator, I would face any danger. But when it occurred to me that by
+lowering my voice, by changing my method of speaking, I might avoid
+the danger, and at the same time learn to speak with more elegance,
+I accepted that as a reason for going into Asia, so that I might
+study how to change my mode of elocution. Thus, when I had been two
+years at work upon causes, and when my name was already well known
+in the Forum, I took my departure, and left Rome."</p>
+
+<p>During the six months that he was at Athens he renewed an early
+acquaintance with one who was destined to become the most faithful,
+and certainly the best known, of his friends. This was Titus
+Pomponius, known to the world as that Atticus to whom were
+addressed something more than half the large body of letters which
+were written by Cicero, and which have remained for our use.<a
+name="FNanchor_48_48" id="FNanchor_48_48"></a><a href=
+"#Footnote_48_48" class="fnanchor">48</a> He seems to have lived
+much with Atticus, who was occupied with similar studies, though
+with altogether different results. Atticus applied himself to the
+practices of the Epicurean school, and did in truth become "Epicuri
+de grege porcus." To enjoy life, to amass a fortune, to keep
+himself free from all turmoils of war or state, to make the best of
+the times, whether they were bad or good, without any attempt on
+his part to mend them&mdash;this was the philosophy of Titus
+Pomponius, who was called Atticus because Athens, full of art and
+literature, easy, unenergetic, and luxurious, was dear to him. To
+this philosophy, or rather to this theory of life, Cicero was
+altogether opposed. He studied <span class='pagenum'><a name=
+"Page_59" id="Page_59">59</a></span>in all the
+schools&mdash;among the Platonists, the Stoics, even with the
+Epicureans enough to know their dogmas so that he might criticise
+them&mdash;proclaiming himself to belong to the new Academy, or
+younger school of Platonists, but in truth drawing no system of
+morals or rule of life from any of them. To him, and also to
+Atticus, no doubt, these pursuits afforded an intellectual pastime.
+Atticus found himself able to justify to himself the bent of his
+disposition by the name of a philosopher, and therefore became an
+Epicurean. Cicero could in no way justify to himself any deviation
+from the energy of public life, from its utility, from its
+ambition, from its loves, or from its hatred; and from the Greek
+philosophers whom he named of this or the other school, received
+only some assistance in that handling of so-called philosophy which
+became the chief amusement of his future life. This was well
+understood by the Latin authors who wrote of Cicero after his own
+time. Quintilian, speaking of Cicero and Brutus as writers of
+philosophy, says of the latter, "Suffecit ponderi rerum; seias enim
+sentire qu&aelig; dicit."<a name="FNanchor_49_49" id=
+"FNanchor_49_49"></a><a href="#Footnote_49_49" class=
+"fnanchor">49</a>&mdash;"He was equal to the weight of the
+subject, for you feel that he believes what he writes." He leaves
+the inference, of course, that Cicero wrote on such matters only
+for the exercise of his ingenuity, as a school-boy writes.</p>
+
+<p>When at Athens, Cicero was initiated into the Eleusinian
+mysteries&mdash;as to which Mr. Collins, in his little volume on
+Cicero, in the Ancient Classics for English Readers, says that they
+"contained under this veil whatever faith in the Invisible and
+Eternal rested in the mind of an enlightened pagan." In this Mr.
+Collins is fully justified by what Cicero himself has said although
+the character thus given to these mysteries is very different from
+that which was attributed to them by early Christian writers. They
+were to those pious but somewhat prejudiced theologists mysterious
+and pagan, and therefore <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_60"
+id="Page_60">60</a></span>horrible.<a name="FNanchor_50_50"
+id="FNanchor_50_50"></a><a href="#Footnote_50_50" class=
+"fnanchor">50</a> But Cicero declares in his dialogue with
+Atticus, De Legibus, written when he was fifty-five years old, in
+the prime of his intellect, that "of all the glories and divine
+gifts which your Athens has produced for the improvement of men
+nothing surpasses these mysteries, by which the harshness of our
+uncivilized life has been softened, and we have been lifted up to
+humanity; and as they are called 'initia,'" by which aspirants were
+initiated, "so we have in truth found in them the seeds of a new
+life. Nor have we received from them only the means of living with
+satisfaction, but also of dying with a better hope as to the
+future."<a name="FNanchor_51_51" id="FNanchor_51_51"></a><a href=
+"#Footnote_51_51" class="fnanchor">51</a></p>
+
+<p>Of what took place with Cicero and Atticus at their introduction
+to the Eleusinian mysteries we know nothing. But it can hardly be
+that, with such memories running in his mind after thirty years,
+expressed in such language to the very friend who had then been his
+companion, they should not have been accepted by him as indicating
+the commencement of some great line of thought. The two doctrines
+which seem to mark most clearly the difference between the men whom
+we regard, the one as a pagan and the other as a Christian, are the
+belief in a future life and the duty of doing well by our
+neighbors. Here they are both indicated, the former in plain
+language, and the latter in that assurance of the softening of the
+barbarity of uncivilized life, "Quibus ex agresti immanique vita
+exculti ad humanitatem et mitigati sumus."</p>
+
+<p>Of the inner life of Cicero at this moment&mdash;how he ate, how
+he drank, with what accompaniment of slaves he lived, how he was
+dressed, and how lodged&mdash;we know very little; <span class=
+'pagenum'><a name="Page_61" id="Page_61">61</a></span>but we
+are told enough to be aware that he could not have travelled, as he
+did in Greece and Asia, without great expense. His brother Quintus
+was with him, so that cost, if not double, was greatly increased.
+Antiochus, Demetrius Syrus, Molo, Menippus, and the others did not
+give him their services for nothing. These were gentlemen of whom
+we know that they were anxious to carry their wares to the best
+market. And then he seems to have been welcomed wherever he went,
+as though travelling in some sort "en prince." No doubt he had
+brought with him the best introductions which Rome could afford;
+but even with them a generous allowance must have been necessary,
+and this must have come from his father's pocket.</p>
+
+<p>As we go on, a question will arise as to Cicero's income and the
+sources whence it came. He asserts of himself that he was never
+paid for his services at the bar. To receive such payment was
+illegal, but was usual. He claims to have kept himself exempt from
+whatever meanness there may have been in so receiving such
+fees&mdash;exempt, at any rate, from the fault of having broken the
+law. He has not been believed. There is no evidence to convict him
+of falsehood, but he has not been believed, because there have not
+been found palpable sources of income sufficient for an expenditure
+so great as that which we know to have been incident to the life he
+led. But we do not know what were his father's means. Seeing the
+nature of the education given to the lad, of the manner in which
+his future life was prepared for him from his earliest days, of the
+promise made to him from his boyhood of a career in the metropolis
+if he could make himself fit for it, of the advantages which costly
+travel afforded him, I think we have reason to suppose that the old
+Cicero was an opulent man, and that the house at Arpinum was no
+humble farm, or fuller's poor establishment.</p>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_62" id="Page_62">
+62</a></span></p>
+
+<h3><a name="CHAPTER_III" id="CHAPTER_III"></a><span class="smcap">Chapter III.</span></h3>
+
+<h4><i>THE CONDITION OF ROME.</i></h4>
+
+<p>It is far from my intention to write a history of Rome during
+the Ciceronian period. Were I to attempt such a work, I should have
+to include the doings of Sertorius in Spain, of Lucullus and Pompey
+in the East, C&aelig;sar's ten years in Gaul, and the civil wars
+from the taking of Marseilles to the final battles of Thapsus and
+Munda. With very many of the great events which the period includes
+Cicero took but slight concern&mdash;so slight that we can hardly
+fail to be astonished when we find how little he had to say of
+them&mdash;he who ran through all the offices of the State, who was
+the chosen guardian of certain allied cities, who has left to us so
+large a mass of correspondence on public subjects, and who was
+essentially a public man for thirty-four years. But he was a public
+man who concerned himself personally with Rome rather than with the
+Roman Empire. Home affairs, and not foreign affairs, were dear to
+him. To C&aelig;sar's great deeds in Gaul we should have had from
+him almost no allusion, had not his brother Quintus been among
+C&aelig;sar's officers, and his young friend Trebatius been
+confided by himself to C&aelig;sar's care. Of Pharsalia we only
+learn from him that, in utter despair of heart, he allowed himself
+to be carried to the war. Of the proconsular governments throughout
+the Roman Empire we should not learn much from Cicero, were it not
+that it has been shown to us by the trial of Verres how atrocious
+might be the conduct of a Roman Governor, and by the narratives of
+Cicero's own rule in Cilicia, how excellent. The history of
+the time has been <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_63" id=
+"Page_63">63</a></span>written for modern readers by Merivale
+and Mommsen, with great research and truth as to facts, but, as I
+think with some strong feeling. Now Mr. Froude has followed with
+his C&aelig;sar, which might well have been called Anti-Cicero. All
+these in lauding, and the two latter in deifying, the successful
+soldier, have, I think, dealt hardly with Cicero, attributing to
+his utterances more than they mean; doubting his sincerity, but
+seeing clearly the failure of his political efforts. With the great
+facts of the Roman Empire as they gradually formed themselves from
+the fall of Carthage, when the Empire began,<a name=
+"FNanchor_52_52" id="FNanchor_52_52"></a><a href="#Footnote_52_52"
+class="fnanchor">52</a> to the establishment of Augustus, when it
+was consummated, I do not pretend to deal, although by far the most
+momentous of them were crowded into the life of Cicero. But in
+order that I may, if possible, show the condition of his mind
+toward the Republic&mdash;that I may explain what it was that he
+hoped and why he hoped it&mdash;I must go back and relate in a few
+words what it was that Marius and Sulla had done for Rome.</p>
+
+<p>Of both these men all the doings with which history is greatly
+concerned were comprised within the early years of Cicero's life.
+Marius, indeed, was nearly fifty years of age when his
+fellow-townsman was born, and had become a distinguished soldier,
+and, though born of humble parents, had pushed himself to the
+Consulate. His quarrel with Sulla had probably commenced, springing
+from jealousy as to deeds done in the Jugurthine war. But it is not
+matter of much moment, now that Marius had proved himself to be a
+good and hardy soldier, excepting in this, that, by making himself
+a soldier in early life, he enabled himself in his latter years to
+become the master of Rome.</p>
+
+<p>Sulla, too, was born thirty-two years before Cicero&mdash;a
+patrician of the bluest blood&mdash;and having gone, as we say,
+into <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_64" id="Page_64">
+64</a></span>public life, and having been elected Qu&aelig;stor, became
+a soldier by dint of office, as a man with us may become head of
+the Admiralty. As Qu&aelig;stor he was sent to join Marius in Africa a
+few months before Cicero was born. Into his hands, as it happened,
+not into those of Marius, Jugurtha was surrendered by his
+father-in-law, Bocchus, who thought thus to curry favor with the
+Romans. Thence came those internecine feuds, in which, some
+twenty-five years later, all Rome was lying butchered. The cause of
+quarrelling between these two men, the jealousies which grew in the
+heart of the elder, from the renewed successes of the younger, are
+not much to us now; but the condition to which Rome had been
+brought, when two such men could scramble for the city, and each
+cut the throats of the relatives, friends, and presumed allies of
+the other, has to be inquired into by those who would understand
+what Rome had been, what it was, and what it was necessarily to
+become.</p>
+
+<p>When Cicero was of an age to begin to think of these things, and
+had put on the "toga virilis," and girt himself with a sword to
+fight under the father of Pompey for the power of Rome against the
+Italian allies who were demanding citizenship, the quarrel was in
+truth rising to its bitterness. Marius and Sulla were on the same
+side in that war. But Marius had then not only been Consul, but had
+been six times Consul; and he had beaten the Teutons and the
+Cimbrians, by whom Romans had feared that all Italy would be
+occupied. What was not within the power of such a leader of
+soldiers? and what else but a leader of soldiers could prevail when
+Italy and Rome, but for such a General, had been at the mercy of
+barbaric hordes, and when they had been compelled to make that
+General six times Consul?</p>
+
+<p>Marius seems to have been no politician. He became a soldier and
+then a General; and because he was great as a soldier and General,
+the affairs of the State fell into his hands with very little
+effort. In the old days of Rome military <span class='pagenum'><a
+name="Page_65" id="Page_65">65</a></span>power had been needed
+for defence, and successful defence had of course produced
+aggressive masterhood and increased territory. When Hannibal, while
+he was still lingering in Italy, had been circumvented by the
+appearance of Scipio in Africa and the Romans had tasted the
+increased magnificence of external conquest, the desire for foreign
+domination became stronger than that of native rule. From that time
+arms were in the ascendant rather than policy. Up to that time a
+Consul had to become a General, because it was his business to look
+after the welfare of the State. After that time a man became a
+Consul in order that he might be a General. The toga was made to
+give way to the sword, and the noise of the Forum to the trumpets.
+We, looking back now, can see that it must have been so, and we are
+prone to fancy that a wise man looking forward then might have read
+the future. In the days of Marius there was probably no man so
+wise. C&aelig;sar was the first to see it. Cicero would have seen
+it, but that the idea was so odious to him that he could not
+acknowledge to himself that it need be so. His life was one
+struggle against the coming evil&mdash;against the time in which
+brute force was to be made to dominate intellect and civilization.
+His "cedant arma tog&aelig;" was a scream, an impotent scream, against
+all that Sulla had done or C&aelig;sar was about to do. The
+mischief had been effected years before his time, and had gone too
+far ahead to be arrested even by his tongue. Only, in considering
+these things, let us confess that Cicero saw what was good and what
+was evil, though he was mistaken in believing that the good was
+still within reach.</p>
+
+<p>Marius in his way was a C&aelig;sar&mdash;as a soldier,
+undoubtedly a very efficient C&aelig;sar&mdash;having that great
+gift of ruling his own appetites which enables those who possess it
+to conquer the appetites of others. It may be doubted whether his
+quickness in stopping and overcoming the two great hordes from the
+north, the Teutons and the Cimbrians, was not equal in strategy to
+anything that C&aelig;sar accomplished in Gaul. It is probable
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_66" id="Page_66">
+66</a></span>that C&aelig;sar learned much of his tactics from
+studying the man&oelig;uvres of Marius. But Marius was only a General.
+Though he became hot in Roman politics, audacious and confident,
+knowing how to use and how to disregard various weapons of
+political power as they had been handed down by tradition and law,
+the "vetoes" and the auguries, and the official dignities, he used
+them, or disregarded them, in quest only of power for himself. He
+was able to perceive how vain was law in such a period as that in
+which he lived; and that, having risen by force of arms, he must by
+force of arms keep his place or lose his life. With him, at least,
+there was no idea of Roman liberty, little probably of Roman glory,
+except so far as military glory and military power go together.</p>
+
+<p>Sulla was a man endowed with a much keener insight into the
+political condition of the world around him. To make a dash for
+power, as a dog might do, and keep it in his clutch as a dog would,
+was enough for Marius. Sulla could see something of future events.
+He could understand that, by reducing men around him to a low
+level, he could make fast his own power over them, and that he
+could best do this by cutting off the heads of all who stood a
+little higher than their neighbors. He might thus produce
+tranquillity, and security to himself and others. Some glimmer of
+an idea of an Augustan rule was present to him; and with the view
+of producing it, he re-established many of the usages of the
+Republic, not reproducing the liberty but the forms of liberty. It
+seems to have been his idea that a Sullan party might rule the
+Empire by adherence to these forms. I doubt if Marius had any fixed
+idea of government. To get the better of his enemies, and then to
+grind them into powder under his feet, to seize rank and power and
+riches, and then to enjoy them, to sate his lust with blood and
+money and women, at last even with wine, and to feed his revenge by
+remembering the hard things which he was made to endure during the
+period of his overthrow&mdash;this <span class='pagenum'><a name=
+"Page_67" id="Page_67">67</a></span>seems to have been enough
+for Marius.<a name="FNanchor_53_53" id="FNanchor_53_53"></a><a
+href="#Footnote_53_53" class="fnanchor">53</a> With Sulla there
+was understanding that the Empire must be ruled, and that the old
+ways would be best if they could be made compatible with the
+newly-concentrated power.</p>
+
+<p>The immediate effect upon Rome, either from one or from the
+other, was nearly the same. In the year 87 <span class=
+"smcap">b.c.</span> Marius occupied himself in slaughtering the
+Sullan party&mdash;during which, however, Sulla escaped from Rome
+to the army of which he was selected as General, and proceeded to
+Athens and the East with the object of conquering Mithridates; for,
+during these personal contests, the command of this expedition had
+been the chief bone of contention among them. Marius, who was by
+age unfitted, desired to obtain it in order that Sulla might not
+have it. In the next year, 86 <span class="smcap">b.c.</span>,
+Marius died, being then Consul for the seventh time. Sulla was away
+in the East, and did not return till 83 <span class=
+"smcap">b.c.</span> In the interval was that period of peace, fit
+for study, of which Cicero afterward spoke. "Triennium fere fuit
+urbs sine armis."<a name="FNanchor_54_54" id=
+"FNanchor_54_54"></a><a href="#Footnote_54_54" class=
+"fnanchor">54</a> Cicero was then twenty-two or twenty-three
+years old, and must well have understood, from his remembrance of
+the Marian massacres, what it was to have the city embroiled by
+arms. It was not that men were fighting, but that they were simply
+being killed at the pleasure of the slaughterer. Then Sulla came
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_68" id="Page_68">
+68</a></span>back, 83 <span class="smcap">b.c.</span>, when Cicero
+was twenty-four; and if Marius had scourged the city with rods, he
+scourged it with scorpions. It was the city, in truth, that was
+scourged, and not simply the hostile faction. Sulla began by
+proscribing 520 citizens declaring that he had included in his list
+all that he remembered, and that those forgotten should be added on
+another day. The numbers were gradually raised to 4,700! Nor did
+this merely mean that those named should be caught and killed by
+some miscalled officers of justice.<a name="FNanchor_55_55" id=
+"FNanchor_55_55"></a><a href="#Footnote_55_55" class=
+"fnanchor">55</a> All the public was armed against the wretched,
+and any who should protect them were also doomed to death. This,
+however, might have been comparatively inefficacious to inflict the
+amount of punishment intended by Sulla. Men generally do not
+specially desire to imbrue their hands in the blood of other men.
+Unless strong hatred be at work, the ordinary man, even the
+ordinary Roman, will hardly rise up and slaughter another for the
+sake of the employment. But if lucre be added to blood, then blood
+can be made to flow copiously. This was what Sulla did. Not only
+was the victim's life proscribed, but his property was proscribed
+also; and the man who busied himself in carrying out the great
+butcher's business assiduously, ardently, and unintermittingly, was
+rewarded by the property so obtained. Two talents<a name=
+"FNanchor_56_56" id="FNanchor_56_56"></a><a href="#Footnote_56_56"
+class="fnanchor">56</a> was to be the fee for mere assassination;
+but the man who knew how to carry on well the work of an informer
+could earn many talents. It was thus that fortunes were made in the
+last days of Sulla. It was not only those 520 who were named for
+killing. They were but the firstlings of the flock&mdash;the few
+victims selected before the real workmen understood how valuable a
+trade proscription <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_69" id=
+"Page_69">69</a></span>and confiscation might be made.
+Plutarch tells us how a quiet gentleman walking, as was his custom,
+in the Forum, one who took no part in politics, saw his own name
+one day on the list. He had an Alban villa, and at once knew that
+his villa had been his ruin. He had hardly read the list, and had
+made his exclamation, before he was slaughtered. Such was the
+massacre of Sulla, coming with an interval of two or three years
+after those of Marius, between which was the blessed time in which
+Rome was without arms. In the time of Marius, Cicero was too young,
+and of no sufficient importance, on account of his birth or
+parentage, to fear anything. Nor is it probable that Marius would
+have turned against his townsmen. When Sulla's turn came, Cicero,
+though not absolutely connected with the Dictator, was, so to say,
+on his side in politics. In going back even to this period we may
+use the terms Liberals and Conservatives for describing the two
+parties. Marius was for the people; that is to say, he was opposed
+to the rule of the oligarchy, dispersed the Senate, and loved to
+feel that his own feet were on the necks of the nobility. Of
+liberty, or rights, or popular institutions he recked nothing; but
+not the less was he supposed to be on the people's side. Sulla, on
+the other hand, had been born a patrician, and affected to preserve
+the old traditions of oligarchic rule; and, indeed, though he took
+all the power of the State into his own hands, he did restore, and
+for a time preserve, these old traditions. It must be presumed that
+there was at his heart something of love for old Rome. The
+proscriptions began toward the end of the year 82 <span class=
+"smcap">b.c.</span>, and were continued through eight or nine
+fearful months&mdash;up to the beginning of June, 81 <span class=
+"smcap">b.c.</span> A day was fixed at which there should be no
+more slaughtering&mdash;no more slaughtering, that is, without
+special order in each case, and no more confiscation&mdash;except
+such as might be judged necessary by those who had not as yet
+collected their prey from past victims. Then Sulla, as Dictator,
+set himself to work to reorganize the old laws. There should still
+be Consuls and Pr&aelig;tors, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_70"
+id="Page_70">70</a></span>but with restricted powers, lessened
+almost down to nothing. It seems hard to gather what was exactly
+the Dictator's scheme as the future depositary of power when he
+should himself have left the scene. He did increase the privileges
+of the Senate; but thinking of the Senate of Rome as he must have
+thought of it, esteeming those old men as lowly as he must have
+esteemed them, he could hardly have intended that imperial power
+should be maintained by dividing it among them. He certainly
+contemplated no follower to himself, no heir to his power, as
+C&aelig;sar did. When he had been practically Dictator about three
+years&mdash;though he did not continue the use of the objectionable
+name&mdash;he resigned his rule and walked down, as it were, from
+his throne into private life. I know nothing in history more
+remarkable than Sulla's resignation; and yet the writers who have
+dealt with his name give no explanation of it. Plutarch, his
+biographer, expresses wonder that he should have been willing to
+descend to private life, and that he who made so many enemies
+should have been able to do so with security. Cicero says nothing
+of it. He had probably left Rome before it occurred, and did not
+return till after Sulla's death. It seems to have been accepted as
+being in no especial way remarkable.<a name="FNanchor_57_57" id=
+"FNanchor_57_57"></a><a href="#Footnote_57_57" class=
+"fnanchor">57</a> At his own demand, the plenary power of
+Dictator had been given to him&mdash;power to do all as he liked,
+without reference either to the Senate or to the people, and with
+an added proviso that he should keep it as long as he thought fit,
+and lay it down when it pleased him. He did lay it down, flattering
+himself, probably, that, as he had done his work, he would walk out
+from his dictatorship like some Camillus of old. There had been no
+Dictator in Rome for more than a century and a quarter&mdash;not
+since the time of <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_71" id=
+"Page_71">71</a></span>Hannibal's great victories; and the old
+dictatorships lasted but for a few months or weeks, after which the
+Dictator, having accomplished the special task, threw up his
+office. Sulla now affected to do the same; and Rome, after the
+interval of three years, accepted the resignation in the old
+spirit. It was natural to them, though only by tradition, that a
+Dictator should resign&mdash;so natural that it required no special
+wonder. The salt of the Roman Constitution was gone, but the
+remembrance of the savor of it was still sweet to the minds of the
+Romans.</p>
+
+<p>It seems certain that no attempt was made to injure Sulla when
+he ceased to be nominally at the head of the army, but it is
+probable that he did not so completely divest himself of power as
+to be without protection. In the year after his abdication he died,
+at the age of sixty-one, apparently strong as regards general
+health, but, if Plutarch's story be true, affected with a terrible
+cutaneous disease. Modern writers have spoken of Sulla as though
+they would fain have praised him if they dared, because, in spite
+of his demoniac cruelty, he recognized the expediency of bringing
+the affairs of the Republic again into order. Middleton calls him
+the "only man in history in whom the odium of the most barbarous
+cruelties was extinguished by the glory of his great acts."
+Mommsen, laying the blame of the proscriptions on the head of the
+oligarchy, speaks of Sulla as being either a sword or a pen in the
+service of the State, as a sword or a pen would be required, and
+declares that, in regard to the total "absence of political
+selfishness&mdash;although it is true in this respect
+only&mdash;Sulla deserves to be named side by side with
+Washington."<a name="FNanchor_58_58" id="FNanchor_58_58"></a><a
+href="#Footnote_58_58" class="fnanchor">58</a> To us at present
+who are endeavoring to investigate the sources and the nature of
+Cicero's character, the attributes of this man would be but of
+little moment, were it <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_72" id=
+"Page_72">72</a></span>not that Cicero was probably Cicero
+because Sulla had been Sulla. Horrid as the proscriptions and
+confiscations were to Cicero&mdash;and his opinion of them was
+expressed plainly enough when it was dangerous to express them<a
+name="FNanchor_59_59" id="FNanchor_59_59"></a><a href=
+"#Footnote_59_59" class="fnanchor">59</a>&mdash;still it was
+apparent to him that the cause of order (what we may call the best
+chance for the Republic) lay with the Senate and with the old
+traditions and laws of Rome, in the re-establishment of which Sulla
+had employed himself. Of these institutions Mommsen speaks with a
+disdain which we now cannot but feel to be justified. "On the Roman
+oligarchy of this period," he says "no judgment can be passed save
+one of inexorable and remorseless condemnation; and, like
+everything connected with it, the Sullan constitution is involved
+in that condemnation."<a name="FNanchor_60_60" id=
+"FNanchor_60_60"></a><a href="#Footnote_60_60" class=
+"fnanchor">60</a> We have to admit that the salt had gone out
+from it, and that there was no longer left any savor by which it
+could be preserved. But the German historian seems to err somewhat
+in this, as have also some modern English historians, that they
+have not sufficiently seen that the men of the day had not the
+means of knowing all that they, the historians, know. Sulla and his
+Senate thought that by massacring the Marian faction they had
+restored everything to an equilibrium. Sulla himself seems to have
+believed that when the thing was accomplished Rome would go on, and
+grow in power and prosperity as she had grown, without other
+reforms than those which he had initiated. There can be no doubt
+that many of the best in Rome&mdash;the best in morals, the best in
+patriotism, and the best in erudition&mdash;did think that, with
+the old forms, the old virtue would come back. Pompey thought so,
+and Cicero. Cato thought so, and Brutus. C&aelig;sar, when he came
+to think about it, thought the reverse. But even now to us, looking
+back <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_73" id="Page_73">
+73</a></span>with so many things made clear to us, with all the
+convictions which prolonged success produces, it is doubtful
+whether some other milder change&mdash;some such change as Cicero
+would have advocated&mdash;might not have prevented the tyranny of
+Augustus, the mysteries of Tiberius, the freaks of Caligula, the
+folly of Claudius, and the madness of Nero.</p>
+
+<p>It is an uphill task, that of advocating the cause of a man who
+has failed. The C&aelig;sars of the world are they who make
+interesting stories. That Cicero failed in the great purpose of his
+life has to be acknowledged. He had studied the history of his
+country, and was aware that hitherto the world had produced nothing
+so great as Roman power; and he knew that Rome had produced true
+patriotism. Her Consuls, her Censors, her Tribunes, and her
+Generals had, as a rule, been true to Rome, serving their country,
+at any rate till of late years, rather than themselves. And he
+believed that liberty had existed in Rome, though nowhere else. It
+would be well if we could realize the idea of liberty which Cicero
+entertained. Liberty was very dear to him&mdash;dear to him not
+only as enjoying it himself, but as a privilege for the enjoyment
+of others. But it was only the liberty of a few. Half the
+population of the Roman cities were slaves, and in Cicero's time
+the freedom of the city, which he regarded as necessary to liberty,
+belonged only to a small proportion of the population of Italy. It
+was the liberty of a small privileged class for which he was
+anxious. That a Sicilian should be free under a Roman Proconsul, as
+a Roman citizen was entitled to be, was abhorrent to his doctrine.
+The idea of cosmopolitan freedom&mdash;an idea which exists with
+us, but is not common to very many even now&mdash;had not as yet
+been born: that care for freedom which springs from a desire to do
+to others as we would that they should do to us. It required Christ
+to father that idea; and Cicero, though he was nearer to
+Christianity than any who had yet existed, had not reached it. But
+this liberty, though it was but of a few, was so dear to him that
+he spent his life in an <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_74" id=
+"Page_74">74</a></span>endeavor to preserve it. The kings had
+been expelled from Rome because they had trampled on liberty. Then
+came the Republic, which we know to have been at its best no more
+than an oligarchy; but still it was founded on the idea that
+everything should be done by the votes of the free people. For many
+years everything was done by the votes of the free people. Under
+what inducements they had voted is another question. Clients were
+subject to their patrons, and voted as they were told. We have
+heard of that even in England, where many of us still think that
+such a way of voting is far from objectionable. Perhaps compulsion
+was sometimes used&mdash;a sort of "rattening" by which large
+bodies were driven to the poll to carry this or the other measure.
+Simple eloquence prevailed with some, and with others flattery.
+Then corruption became rampant, as was natural, the rich buying the
+votes of the poor; and votes were bought in various ways&mdash;by
+cheap food as well as by money, by lavish expenditure in games, by
+promises of land, and other means of bribery more or less overt.
+This was bad, of course. Every freeman should have given a vote
+according to his conscience. But in what country&mdash;the
+millennium not having arrived in any&mdash;has this been achieved?
+Though voting in England has not always been pure, we have not
+wished to do away with the votes of freemen and to submit
+everything to personal rule. Nor did Cicero.</p>
+
+<p>He knew that much was bad, and had himself seen many things that
+were very evil. He had lived through the dominations of Marius and
+Sulla, and had seen the old practices of Roman government brought
+down to the pretence of traditional forms. But still, so he
+thought, there was life left in the old forms, if they could be
+revivified by patriotism, labor, and intelligence. It was the best
+that he could imagine for the State&mdash;infinitely better than
+the chance of falling into the bloody hands of one Marius and one
+Sulla after another. Mommsen tells us that nothing could be more
+rotten than the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_75" id=
+"Page_75">75</a></span>condition of oligarchical government
+into which Rome had fallen; and we are inclined to agree with
+Mommsen, because we have seen what followed. But that Cicero,
+living and seeing it all as a present spectator, should have hoped
+better things, should not, I think, cause us to doubt either
+Cicero's wisdom or his patriotism. I cannot but think that, had I
+been a Roman of those days, I should have preferred Cicero, with
+his memories of the past, to C&aelig;sar, with his ambition for the
+future.</p>
+
+<p>Looking back from our standing-point of to-day, we know how
+great Rome was&mdash;infinitely greater, as far as power is
+concerned, than anything else which the world has produced. It came
+to pass that "Urbis et orbis" was not a false boast. Gradually
+growing from the little nest of robbers established on the banks of
+the Tiber, the people of Rome learned how to spread their arms over
+all the known world, and to conquer and rule, while they drew to
+themselves all that the ingenuity and industry of other people had
+produced. To do this, there must have been not only courage and
+persistence, but intelligence, patriotism, and superior excellence
+in that art of combination of which government consists. But yet,
+when we look back, it is hard to say when were the palmy days of
+Rome. When did those virtues shine by which her power was founded?
+When was that wisdom best exhibited from which came her capacity
+for ruling? Not in the time of her early kings, whose mythic
+virtues, if they existed, were concerned but in small matters; for
+the Rome of the kings claimed a jurisdiction extending as yet but a
+few miles from the city. And from the time of their expulsion,
+Rome, though she was rising in power, was rising slowly, and
+through such difficulties that the reader of history, did he not
+know the future, would think from time to time that the day of her
+destruction had come upon her. Not when Brennus was at Rome with
+his Gauls, a hundred and twenty-five years after the expulsion of
+the kings, could Rome be said to have been great; nor when, fifty
+or <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_76" id="Page_76">
+76</a></span>sixty years afterward, the Roman army&mdash;the only
+army which Rome then possessed&mdash;had to lay down its arms in
+the Caudine Forks and pass under the Samnite yoke. Then, when the
+Samnite wars were ended, and Rome was mistress in
+Italy&mdash;mistress, after all, of no more than Southern
+Italy&mdash;the Punic wars began. It could hardly have been during
+that long contest with Carthage, which was carried on for nearly
+fifty years, that the palmy days of Rome were at their best.
+Hannibal seems always to be the master. Trebia, Thrasymene and
+Cann&aelig;, year after year, threaten complete destruction to the State.
+Then comes the great Scipio; and no doubt, if we must mark an era
+of Roman greatness, it would be that of the battle of Zama and the
+submission of Carthage, 201 years before Christ. But with Scipio
+there springs up the idea of personal ambition; and in the
+Macedonian and Greek wars that follow, though the arm of Rome is
+becoming stronger every day, and her shoulders broader, there is
+already the glamour of her decline in virtue. Her dealings with
+Antiochus, with Pyrrhus, and with the Ach&aelig;ans, though successful,
+were hardly glorious. Then came the two Gracchi, and the reader
+begins to doubt whether the glory of the Republic is not already
+over. They demanded impossible reforms, by means as illegal as they
+were impossible, and were both killed in popular riots. The war
+with Jugurtha followed, in which the Romans were for years
+unsuccessful, and during which German hordes from the north rushed
+into Gaul and destroyed an army of 80,000 Romans. This brings us to
+Marius and to Sulla, of whom we have already spoken, and to that
+period of Roman politics which the German historian describes as
+being open to no judgment "save one of inexorable and remorseless
+condemnation."</p>
+
+<p>But, in truth, the history of every people and every nation will
+be subject to the same criticism, if it be regarded with the same
+severity. In all that man has done as yet in the way of government,
+the seeds of decay are apparent when looked back upon from an age
+in advance. The period of Queen Elizabeth <span class='pagenum'><a
+name="Page_77" id="Page_77">77</a></span>was very great to us;
+yet by what dangers were we enveloped in her days! But for a storm
+at sea, we might have been subjected to Spain. By what a system of
+falsehood and petty tyrannies were we governed through the reigns
+of James I. and Charles I.! What periods of rottenness and danger
+there have been since! How little glorious was the reign of Charles
+II.! how full of danger that of William! how mean those of the four
+Georges, with the dishonesty of ministers such as Walpole and
+Newcastle! And to-day, are there not many who are telling us that
+we are losing the liberties which our forefathers got for us, and
+that no judgment can be passed on us "save one of inexorable and
+remorseless condemnation?" We are a great nation, and the present
+threatenings are probably vain. Nevertheless, the seeds of decay
+are no doubt inherent in our policies and our practices&mdash;so
+manifestly inherent that future historians will pronounce upon them
+with certainty.</p>
+
+<p>But Cicero, not having the advantage of distance, having simply
+in his mind the knowledge of the greatness which had been achieved,
+and in his heart a true love for the country which had achieved it,
+and which was his own, encouraged himself to think that the good
+might be recovered and the bad eliminated. Marius and
+Sulla&mdash;Pompey also, toward the end of his career, if I can
+read his character rightly&mdash;C&aelig;sar, and of course
+Augustus, being all destitute of scruple, strove to acquire, each
+for himself, the power which the weak hands of the Senate were
+unable to grasp. However much, or however little, the country of
+itself might have been to any of them, it seemed good to him,
+whether for the country's sake or for his own, that the rule should
+be in his own hands. Each had the opportunity, and each used it, or
+tried to use it. With Cicero there is always present the longing to
+restore the power to the old constitutional possessors of it. So
+much is admitted, even by his bitter enemies; and I am sometimes at
+a loss whether to wonder most that a man of letters, dead two
+thousand years ago, should have enemies so bitter or a friend so
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_78" id="Page_78">
+78</a></span>keenly in earnest about him as I am. Cicero was aware
+quite as well as any who lived then, if he did not see the matter
+clearer even than any others, that there was much that was rotten
+in the State. Men who had been murderers on behalf of Marius, and
+then others who had murdered on behalf of Sulla&mdash;among whom
+that Catiline, of whom we have to speak presently, had been
+one&mdash;were not apt to settle themselves down as quiet citizens.
+The laws had been set aside. Even the law courts had been closed.
+Sulla had been law, and the closets of his favorites had been the
+law courts. Senators had been cowed and obedient. The Tribunes had
+only been mock Tribunes. Rome, when Cicero began his public life,
+was still trembling. The Consuls of the day were men chosen at
+Sulla's command. The army was Sulla's army. The courts were now
+again opened by Sulla's permission. The day fixed by Sulla when
+murderers might no longer murder&mdash;or, at any rate, should not
+be paid for murdering&mdash;had arrived. There was not, one would
+say, much hope for good things. But Sulla had reproduced the signs
+of order, and the best hope lay in that direction. Consuls,
+Pr&aelig;tors, Qu&aelig;stors, &AElig;diles, even Tribunes, were still there.
+Perhaps it might be given to him, to Cicero, to strengthen the
+hands of such officers. At any rate, there was no better course
+open to him by which he could serve his country.</p>
+
+<p>The heaviest accusation brought against Cicero charges him with
+being insincere to the various men with whom he was brought in
+contact in carrying out the purpose of his life, and he has also
+been accused of having changed his purpose. It has been alleged
+that, having begun life as a democrat, he went over to the
+aristocracy as soon as he had secured his high office of State. As
+we go on, it will be my object to show that he was altogether
+sincere in his purpose, that he never changed his political idea,
+and that, in these deviations as to men and as to means, whether,
+for instance, he was ready to serve C&aelig;sar or to oppose him,
+he was guided, even in the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_79"
+id="Page_79">79</a></span>insincerity of his utterances, by
+the sincerity of his purpose. I think that I can remember, even in
+Great Britain, even in the days of Queen Victoria, men sitting
+check by jowl on the same Treasury bench who have been very bitter
+to each other with anything but friendly words. With us fidelity in
+friendship is, happily, a virtue. In Rome expediency governed
+everything. All I claim for Cicero is, that he was more sincere
+than others around him.</p>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_80" id="Page_80">
+80</a></span></p>
+
+<h3><a name="CHAPTER_IV" id="CHAPTER_IV"></a><span class="smcap">Chapter IV.</span></h3>
+
+<h4><i>HIS EARLY PLEADINGS.&mdash;SEXTUS ROSCIUS AMERINUS.&mdash;HIS
+INCOME.</i></h4>
+
+<div class="sidenote"><span class="smcap">b.c.</span> 80,
+<i>&aelig;tat</i> 27</div>
+
+<p>We now come to the beginning of the work of Cicero's life. This
+at first consisted in his employment as an advocate, from which he
+gradually rose into public or political occupation, as so often
+happens with a successful barrister in our time. We do not know
+with absolute certainty even in what year Cicero began his
+pleadings, or in what cause. It may probably have been in 81 <span
+class="smcap">b.c.</span>, when he was twenty-five, or in his
+twenty-sixth year. Of the pleadings of which we know the
+particulars, that in the defence of Sextus Roscius Amerinus, which
+took place undoubtedly in the year 80 <span class=
+"smcap">b.c.</span>, &aelig;tat twenty-seven, was probably the earliest.
+As to that, we have his speech nearly entire, as we have also one
+for Publius Quintius, which has generally been printed first among
+the orator's works. It has, however, I think, been made clear that
+that spoken for Sextus Roscius came before it. It is certain that
+there had been others before either of them. In that for Sextus he
+says that he had never spoken before in any public cause,<a name=
+"FNanchor_61_61" id="FNanchor_61_61"></a><a href="#Footnote_61_61"
+class="fnanchor">61</a> such as was the accusation in which he
+was now engaged, from which the inference has to be made that he
+had been engaged in private causes; and in that for Quintius he
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_81" id="Page_81">
+81</a></span>declares that there was wanting to him in that matter
+an aid which he had been accustomed to enjoy in others.<a name=
+"FNanchor_62_62" id="FNanchor_62_62"></a><a href="#Footnote_62_62"
+class="fnanchor">62</a> No doubt he had tried his 'prentice hand
+in cases of less importance. That of these two the defence of
+Sextus Roscius came first, is also to be found in his own words.
+More than once, in pleading for Quintius, he speaks of the
+proscriptions and confiscations of Sulla as evils then some time
+past. These were brought nominally to a close in June, 81; but it
+has been supposed by those who have placed this oration first that
+it was spoken in that very year. This seems to have been
+impossible. "I am most unwilling," says he, "to call to mind that
+subject, the very memory of which should be wiped out from our
+thoughts."<a name="FNanchor_63_63" id="FNanchor_63_63"></a><a href=
+"#Footnote_63_63" class="fnanchor">63</a> When the tone of the
+two speeches is compared, it will become evident that that for
+Sextus Roscius was spoken the first. It was, as I have said, spoken
+in his twenty-seventh year, <span class="smcap">b.c.</span> 80, the
+year after the proscription lists had been closed, when Sulla was
+still Dictator, and when the sales of confiscated goods, though no
+longer legal, were still carried on under assumed authority. As to
+such violation of Sulla's own enactment, Cicero excuses the
+Dictator in this very speech, likening him to Great Jove the
+Thunderer. Even "Jupiter Optimus Maximus," as he is whose nod the
+heavens, the earth, and seas obey&mdash;even he cannot so look
+after his numerous affairs but that the winds and the storms will
+be too strong sometimes, or the heat too great, or the cold too
+bitter. If so, how can we wonder that Sulla, who has to rule the
+State, to govern, in fact, the world, should not be able himself to
+see to everything? Jove probably found it convenient not to see
+many things. Such must certainly have been the case with Sulla.</p>
+
+<p>I will venture, as other biographers have done before, to tell
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_82" id="Page_82">
+82</a></span>the story of Sextus Roscius of Ameria at some length,
+because it is in itself a tale of powerful romance, mysterious,
+grim, betraying guilt of the deepest dye, misery most profound, and
+audacity unparalleled; because, in a word, it is as interesting as
+any novel that modern fiction has produced; and also, I will tell
+it, because it lets in a flood of light upon the condition of Rome
+at the time. Our hair is made to stand on end when we remember that
+men had to pick their steps in such a State as this, and to live if
+it were possible, and, if not, then to be ready to die. We come in
+upon the fag-end of the proscription, and see, not the bloody
+wreath of Sulla as he triumphed on his Marian foes, not the cruel
+persecution of the ruler determined to establish his order of
+things by slaughtering every foe, but the necessary accompaniments
+of such ruthless deeds&mdash;those attendant villanies for which
+the Jupiter Optimus Maximus of the day had neither ears nor eyes.
+If in history we can ever get a glimpse at the real life of the
+people, it is always more interesting than any account of the great
+facts, however grand.</p>
+
+<p>The Kalends of June had been fixed by Sulla as the day on which
+the slaughter legalized by the proscriptions should cease. In the
+September following an old gentleman named Sextus Roscius was
+murdered in the streets of Rome as he was going home from supper
+one night, attended by two slaves. By whom he was murdered,
+probably more than one or two knew then, but nobody knows now. He
+was a man of reputation, well acquainted with the Metelluses and
+Messalas of the day, and passing rich. His name had been down on no
+proscription list, for he had been a friend of Sulla's friends. He
+was supposed, when he was murdered, to be worth about six million
+of sesterces, or something between fifty and sixty thousand pounds
+of our money. Though there was at that time much money in Rome,
+this amounted to wealth; and though we cannot say who murdered the
+man, we may feel sure that he was murdered for his money.</p>
+
+<p>Immediately on his death his chattels were seized and
+sold&mdash;<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_83" id="Page_83">
+83</a></span>or divided, probably, without being
+sold&mdash;including his slaves, in whom, as with every rich Roman,
+much of his wealth was invested; and his landed estates&mdash;his
+farms, of which he had many&mdash;were also divided. As to the
+actual way in which this was done, we are left much in the dark.
+Had the name of Sextus Roscius been on one of the lists, even
+though the list would then have been out of date, we could have
+understood that it should have been so. Jupiter Optimus Maximus
+could not see everything, and great advantages were taken. We must
+only suppose that things were so much out of order that they who
+had been accustomed to seize upon the goods of the proscribed were
+able to stretch their hands so as to grasp almost anything that
+came in their way. They could no longer procure a rich man's name
+to be put down on the list, but they could pretend that it had been
+put down. At any rate, certain persons seized and divided the
+chattels of the murdered man as though he had been proscribed.</p>
+
+<p>Old Roscius, when he was killed, had one son, of whom we are
+told that he lived always in the country at Ameria, looking after
+his father's farms, never visiting the capital, which was distant
+from Ameria something under fifty miles; a rough, uncouth, and
+probably honest man&mdash;one, at any rate, to whom the ways of the
+city were unknown, and who must have been but partially acquainted
+with the doings of the time.<a name="FNanchor_64_64" id=
+"FNanchor_64_64"></a><a href="#Footnote_64_64" class=
+"fnanchor">64</a> As we read the story, we feel that very much
+depends on the character of this man, and we are aware that our
+only description of him comes from his own advocate. Cicero would
+probably say much which, though beyond the truth, could not be
+absolutely refuted, but would state as facts nothing that was
+absolutely false. Cicero describes him as a middle-aged man, who
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_84" id="Page_84">
+84</a></span>never left his farm, doing his duty well by his
+father, as whose agent he acted on the land&mdash;a simple,
+unambitious, ignorant man, to whom one's sympathies are due rather
+than our antipathy, because of his devotion to agriculture. He was
+now accused of having murdered his father. The accusation was
+conducted by one Erucius, who in his opening speech&mdash;the
+speech made before that by Cicero&mdash;had evidently spoken ill of
+rural employments. Then Cicero reminds him, and the judges, and the
+Court how greatly agriculture had been honored in the old days,
+when Consuls were taken from the ploughs. The imagination, however,
+of the reader pictures to itself a man who could hardly have been a
+Consul at any time&mdash;one silent, lonely, uncouth, and
+altogether separate from the pleasant intercourses of life. Erucius
+had declared of him that he never took part in any festivity.
+Cicero uses this to show that he was not likely to have been
+tempted by luxury to violence. Old Roscius had had two sons, of
+whom he had kept one with him in Rome&mdash;the one, probably,
+whose society had been dearest to him. He, however, had died, and
+our Roscius&mdash;Sextus Roscius Amerinus, as he came to be called
+when he was made famous by the murder&mdash;was left on one of the
+farms down in the country. The accusation would probably not have
+been made, had he not been known to be a man sullen, silent, rough,
+and unpopular&mdash;as to whom such a murder might be supposed to
+be credible.</p>
+
+<p>Why should any accusation have been made unless there was clear
+evidence as to guilt? That is the first question which presents
+itself. This son received no benefit from his father's death. He
+had in fact been absolutely beggared by it&mdash;had lost the farm,
+the farming utensils, every slave in the place, all of which had
+belonged to his father, and not to himself. They had been taken,
+and divided; taken by persons called "Sectores," informers or
+sequestrators, who took possession of and sold&mdash;or did not
+sell&mdash;confiscated goods. Such men in this case had pounced
+down upon the goods of <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_85" id=
+"Page_85">85</a></span>the murdered man at once and swallowed
+them all up, not leaving an acre or a slave to our Roscius. Cicero
+tells us who divided the spoil among them. There were two other
+Rosciuses, distant relatives, probably, both named Titus; Titus
+Roscius Magnus, who sojourned in Rome, and who seems to have
+exercised the trade of informer and assassin during the
+proscriptions, and Titus Roscius Capito, who, when at home, lived
+at Ameria, but of whom Cicero tells us that he had become an apt
+pupil of the other during this affair. They had got large shares,
+but they shared also with one Chrysogonus, the freedman and
+favorite of Sulla, who did the dirty work for Jupiter Optimus
+Maximus when Jupiter Optimus Maximus had not time to do it himself.
+We presume that Chrysogonus had the greater part of the plunder. As
+to Capito, the apt pupil, we are told again and again that he got
+three farms for himself.</p>
+
+<p>Again, it is necessary to say that all these facts come from
+Cicero, who, in accordance with the authorized practice of
+barristers, would scruple at saying nothing which he found in his
+instructions. How instructions were conveyed to an advocate in
+those days we do not quite know. There was no system of attorneys.
+But the story was probably made out for the "patronus" or advocate
+by an underling, and in some way prepared for him. That which was
+thus prepared he exaggerated as the case might seem to require. It
+has to be understood of Cicero that he possessed great art and, no
+doubt, great audacity in such exaggeration; in regard to which we
+should certainly not bear very heavily upon him now, unless we are
+prepared to bear more heavily upon those who do the same thing in
+our own enlightened days. But Cicero, even as a young man, knew his
+business much too well to put forward statements which could be
+disproved. The accusation came first; then the speech in defence;
+after that the evidence, which was offered only on the side of the
+accuser, and which was subject to cross-examination. Cicero would
+have <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_86" id="Page_86">
+86</a></span>no opportunity of producing evidence. He was thus
+exempted from the necessity of proving his statements, but was
+subject to have them all disproved. I think we may take it for
+granted that the property of the murdered man was divided as he
+tells us.</p>
+
+<p>If that was so, why should any accusation have been made? Our
+Sextus seems to have been too much crushed by the dangers of his
+position to have attempted to get back any part of his father's
+wealth. He had betaken himself to the protection of a certain noble
+lady, one Metella, whose family had been his father's friends, and
+by her and her friends the defence was no doubt managed. "You have
+my farms," he is made to say by his advocate; "I live on the
+charity of another. I abandon everything because I am placid by
+nature, and because it must be so. My house, which is closed to me,
+is open to you: I endure it. You have possessed yourself of my
+whole establishment; I have not one single slave. I suffer all
+this, and feel that I must suffer it. What do you want more? Why do
+you persecute me further? In what do you think that I shall hurt
+you? How do I interfere with you? In what do I oppose you? Is it
+your wish to kill a man for the sake of plunder? You have your
+plunder. If for the sake of hatred, what hatred can you feel
+against him of whose land you have taken possession before you had
+even known him?"<a name="FNanchor_65_65" id="FNanchor_65_65"></a><a
+href="#Footnote_65_65" class="fnanchor">65</a> Of all this, which
+is the advocate's appeal to pity, we may believe as little as we
+please. Cicero is addressing the judge, and desires only an
+acquittal. But the argument shows that no overt act in quest of
+restitution had as yet been made. Nevertheless, Chrysogonus feared
+such action, and had arranged with the two Tituses that something
+should be done to prevent it. What are we to think of the condition
+of a city in which not only could a man be murdered for his wealth
+walking home from supper&mdash;that, indeed, might happen in London
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_87" id="Page_87">
+87</a></span>if there existed the means of getting at the man's
+money when the man was dead&mdash;but in which such a plot could be
+concerted in order that the robbery might be consummated? "We have
+murdered the man and taken his money under the false plea that his
+goods had been confiscated. Friends, we find, are
+interfering&mdash;these Metellas and Metelluses, probably. There is
+a son who is the natural heir. Let us say that he killed his own
+father. The courts of law, which have only just been reopened since
+the dear days of proscription, disorder, and confiscation, will
+hardly yet be alert enough to acquit a man in opposition to the
+Dictator's favorite. Let us get him convicted, and, as a parricide,
+sewed up alive in a bag and thrown into the river"&mdash;as some of
+us have perhaps seen cats drowned, for such was the
+punishment&mdash;"and then he at least will not disturb us." It
+must have thus been that the plot was arranged.</p>
+
+<p>It was a plot so foul that nothing could be fouler; but not the
+less was it carried out persistently with the knowledge and the
+assistance of many. Erucius, the accuser, who seems to have been
+put forward on the part of Chrysogonus, asserted that the man had
+caused his father to be murdered because of hatred. The father was
+going to disinherit the son, and therefore the son murdered the
+father. In this there might have been some probability, had there
+been any evidence of such an intention on the father's part. But
+there was none. Cicero declares that the father had never thought
+of disinheriting his son. There had been no quarrel, no hatred.
+This had been assumed as a reason&mdash;falsely. There was in fact
+no cause for such a deed; nor was it possible that the son should
+have done it. The father was killed in Rome when, as was evident,
+the son was fifty miles off. He never left his farm. Erucius, the
+accuser, had said, and had said truly, that Rome was full of
+murderers.<a name="FNanchor_66_66" id="FNanchor_66_66"></a><a href=
+"#Footnote_66_66" class="fnanchor">66</a> But who was the <span
+class='pagenum'><a name="Page_88" id="Page_88">
+88</a></span>most likely to have employed such a person: this
+rough husbandman, who had no intercourse with Rome, who knew no one
+there, who knew little of Roman ways, who had nothing to get by the
+murder when committed, or they who had long been concerned with
+murderers, who knew Rome, and who were now found to have the
+property in their hands?</p>
+
+<p>The two slaves who had been with the old man when he was killed,
+surely they might tell something? Here there comes out incidentally
+the fact that slaves when they were examined as witnesses were
+tortured, quite as a matter of course, so that their evidence might
+be extracted. This is spoken of with no horror by Cicero, nor, as
+far as I can remember, by other Roman writers. It was regarded as
+an established rule of life that a slave, if brought into a court
+of law, should be made to tell the truth by such appliances. This
+was so common that one is tempted to hope, and almost to suppose
+that the "question" was not ordinarily administered with
+circumstances of extreme cruelty. We hear, indeed, of slaves having
+their liberty given them in order that, being free, they may not be
+forced by torture to tell the truth;<a name="FNanchor_67_67" id=
+"FNanchor_67_67"></a><a href="#Footnote_67_67" class=
+"fnanchor">67</a> but had the cruelty been of the nature
+described by Scott in "Old Mortality," when the poor preacher's
+limbs were mangled, I think we should have heard more of it. Nor
+was the torture always applied, but only when the expected evidence
+was not otherwise forth-coming. Cicero explains, in the little
+dialogue given below, how the thing was carried on.<a name=
+"FNanchor_68_68" id="FNanchor_68_68"></a><a href="#Footnote_68_68"
+class="fnanchor">68</a> "You had better tell the truth now, my
+friend: Was it so and so?" The slave knows that, if he says it was
+so, there is the cross for him, or the "little horse;" but that, if
+he will say the contrary, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_89"
+id="Page_89">89</a></span>he will save his joints from
+racking. And yet the evidence went for what it was worth.</p>
+
+<p>In this case of Roscius there had certainly been two slaves
+present; but Cicero, who, as counsel for the defence, could call no
+witnesses, had not the power to bring them into court; nor could
+slaves have been made to give evidence against their masters. These
+slaves, who had belonged to the murdered man, were now the property
+either of Chrysogonus or of the two Tituses. There was no getting
+at their evidence but by permission of their masters, and this was
+withheld. Cicero demands that they shall be produced, knowing that
+the demand will have no effect. "The man here," he says, pointing
+to the accused, "asks for it, prays for it. What will you do in
+this case? Why do you refuse?"<a name="FNanchor_69_69" id=
+"FNanchor_69_69"></a><a href="#Footnote_69_69" class=
+"fnanchor">69</a></p>
+
+<p>By this time the reader is brought to feel that the accused
+person cannot possibly have been guilty; and if the reader, how
+much more the hearer? Then Cicero goes on to show who in truth were
+guilty. "Doubt now if you can, judges, by whom Roscius was killed:
+whether by him who, by his father's death, is plunged into poverty
+and trouble&mdash;who is forbidden even to investigate the
+truth&mdash;or by those who are afraid of real evidence, who
+themselves possess the plunder, who live in the midst of murder,
+and on the proceeds of murder."<a name="FNanchor_70_70" id=
+"FNanchor_70_70"></a><a href="#Footnote_70_70" class=
+"fnanchor">70</a></p>
+
+<p>Then he addresses one of the Tituses, Titus Magnus, who seems to
+have been sitting in the court, and who is rebuked for his
+impudence in doing so: "Who can doubt who was the
+murderer&mdash;you who have got all the plunder, or this man who
+has lost everything? But if it be added to this that you were a
+pauper before&mdash;that you have been known as a greedy fellow, as
+a dare-devil, as the avowed enemy of him who has been
+killed&mdash;then need one ask what has brought you to do such a
+deed as this?"<a name="FNanchor_71_71" id="FNanchor_71_71"></a><a
+href="#Footnote_71_71" class="fnanchor">71</a></p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_90" id="Page_90">
+90</a></span>He next tells what took place, as far as it was
+known, immediately after the murder. The man had been killed coming
+home from supper, in September, after it was dark, say at eight or
+nine o'clock, and the fact was known in Ameria before dawn.
+Travelling was not then very quick; but a messenger, one Mallius
+Glaucia, a man on very close terms with Titus Magnus, was sent down
+at once in a light gig to travel through the night and take the
+information to Titus Capito Why was all this hurry? How did Glaucia
+hear of the murder so quickly? What cause to travel all through the
+night? Why was it necessary that Capito should know all about it at
+once? "I cannot think," says Cicero, "only that I see that Capito
+has got three of the farms out of the thirteen which the murdered
+man owned!" But Capito is to be produced as a witness, and Cicero
+gives us to understand what sort of cross-examination he will have
+to undergo.</p>
+
+<p>In all this the reader has to imagine much, and to come to
+conclusions as to facts of which he has no evidence. When that
+hurried messenger was sent, there was probably no idea of accusing
+the son. The two real contrivers of the murder would have been more
+on their guard had they intended such a course. It had been
+conceived that when the man was dead and his goods seized, the fear
+of Sulla's favorite, the still customary dread of the horrors of
+the time, would cause the son to shrink from inquiry. Hitherto,
+when men had been killed and their goods taken, even if the killing
+and the taking had not been done strictly in accordance with
+Sulla's ordinance, it had been found safer to be silent and to
+endure; but this poor wretch, Sextus, had friends in
+Rome&mdash;friends who were friends of Sulla&mdash;of whom
+Chrysogonus and the Tituses had probably not bethought themselves.
+When it came to pass that more stir was made than they had
+expected, then the accusation became necessary.</p>
+
+<p>But, in order to obtain the needed official support and aid,
+Chrysogonus must be sought. Sulla was then at Volaterra, in Etruria
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_91" id="Page_91">
+91</a></span>perhaps 150 miles north-west from Rome, and with him
+was his favorite Chrysogonus. In four days from the time of this
+murder the news was earned thither, and, so Cicero states, by the
+same messenger&mdash;by Glaucia&mdash;who had taken it to Ameria.
+Chrysogonus immediately saw to the selling of the goods, and from
+this Cicero implies that Chrysogonus and the two Tituses were in
+partnership.</p>
+
+<p>But it seems that when the fact of the death of old Roscius was
+known at Ameria&mdash;at which place he was an occasional resident
+himself, and the most conspicuous man in the place&mdash;the
+inhabitants, struck with horror, determined to send a deputation to
+Sulla. Something of what was being done with their townsman's
+property was probably known, and there seems to have been a desire
+for justice. Ten townsmen were chosen to go to Sulla, and to beg
+that he would personally look into the matter. Here, again, we are
+very much in the dark, because this very Capito, to whom these
+farms were allotted as his share, was not only chosen to be one of
+the ten, but actually became their spokesman and their manager. The
+great object was to keep Sulla himself in the dark, and this Capito
+managed to do by the aid of Chrysogonus. None of the ten were
+allowed to see Sulla. They are hoaxed into believing that
+Chrysogonus himself will look to it, and so they go back to Ameria,
+having achieved nothing. We are tempted to believe that the
+deputation was a false deputation, each of whom probably had his
+little share, so that in this way there might be an appearance of
+justice. If it was so, Cicero has not chosen to tell that part of
+the story, having, no doubt, some good advocate's reason for
+omitting it.</p>
+
+<p>So far the matter had gone with the Tituses, and with
+Chrysogonus who had got his lion's share. Our poor Roscius, the
+victim, did at first abandon his property, and allow himself to be
+awed into silence. We cannot but think that he was a poor creature,
+and can fancy that he had lived a wretched life during all the
+murders of the Sullan proscriptions. But in his <span class=
+'pagenum'><a name="Page_92" id="Page_92">92</a></span>abject
+misery he had found his way up among the great friends of his
+family at Rome, and had there been charged with the parricide,
+because Chrysogonus and the Tituses began to be afraid of what
+these great friends might do.</p>
+
+<p>This is the story as Cicero has been able to tell it in his
+speech. Beyond that, we only know that the man was acquitted.
+Whether he got back part of his father's property there is nothing
+to inform us. Whether further inquiry was made as to the murder;
+whether evil befell those two Tituses or Chrysogonus was made to
+disgorge, there has been no one to inform us. The matter was of
+little importance in Rome, where murders and organized robberies of
+the kind were the common incidents of every-day life. History would
+have meddled with nothing so ordinary had not it happened that the
+case fell into the hands of a man so great a master of his language
+that it has been worth the while of ages to perpetuate the speech
+which he made in the matter. But the story, as a story of Roman
+life, is interesting, and it gives a slight aid to history in
+explaining the condition of things which Sulla had produced.</p>
+
+<p>The attack upon Chrysogonus is bold, and cannot but have been
+offensive to Sulla, though Sulla is by name absolved from immediate
+blame. Chrysogonus himself, the favorite, he does not spare, saying
+words so bitter of tone that one would think that the
+judges&mdash;Sulla's judges&mdash;would have stopped him, had they
+been able. "Putting aside Sextus Roscius," he says, "I demand,
+first of all, why the goods of an esteemed citizen were sold; then,
+why have the goods been sold of one who had not himself been
+proscribed, and who had not been killed while defending Sulla's
+enemies? It is against those only that the law is made. Then I
+demand why they were sold when the legal day for such sales had
+passed, and why they were sold for such a trifle."<a name=
+"FNanchor_72_72" id="FNanchor_72_72"></a><a href="#Footnote_72_72"
+class="fnanchor">72</a> Then he gives us a picture of Chrysogonus
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_93" id="Page_93">
+93</a></span>flaunting down the streets. "You have seen him,
+judges, how, his locks combed and perfumed, he swims along the
+Forum"&mdash;he, a freedman, with a crowd of Roman citizens at his
+heels, that all may see that he thinks himself inferior to
+none&mdash;"the only happy man of the day, the only one with any
+power in his hands."<a name="FNanchor_73_73" id=
+"FNanchor_73_73"></a><a href="#Footnote_73_73" class=
+"fnanchor">73</a></p>
+
+<p>This trial was, as has been said, a "causa publica," a criminal
+accusation of such importance as to demand that it should be tried
+before a full bench of judges. Of these the number would be
+uncertain, but they were probably above fifty. The Pr&aelig;tor of the
+day&mdash;the Pr&aelig;tor to whom by lot had fallen for that year that
+peculiar duty&mdash;presided, and the judges all sat round him.
+Their duty seems to have consisted in listening to the pleadings,
+and then in voting. Each judge could vote<a name="FNanchor_74_74"
+id="FNanchor_74_74"></a><a href="#Footnote_74_74" class=
+"fnanchor">74</a> "guilty," "acquitted," or "not proven," as they
+do in Scotland. They were, in fact, jurymen rather than judges. It
+does not seem that any amount of legal lore was looked for
+specially in the judges, who at different periods had been taken
+from various orders of the citizens, but who at this moment, by a
+special law enacted by Sulla, were selected only from the Senators.
+We have ample evidence that at this period the judges in Rome were
+most corrupt. They were tainted by a double corruption: that of
+standing by their order instead of standing by the
+public&mdash;each man among them feeling that his turn to be
+accused might come&mdash;and that also of taking direct bribes.
+Cicero on various occasions&mdash;on this, for instance, and
+notably in the trial of Verres, to which we shall come
+soon&mdash;<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_94" id="Page_94">
+94</a></span>felt very strongly that his only means of getting a
+true verdict from the majority of judges was to frighten them into
+temporary honesty by the magnitude of the occasion. If a trial
+could be slurred through with indifferent advocates, with nothing
+to create public notice, with no efforts of genius to attract
+admiration, and a large attendance and consequent sympathy the
+judgment would, as a matter of course, be bought. In such a case as
+this of Sextus Roscius, the poor wretch would be condemned, sewed
+up in his bag, and thrown into the sea, a portion of the plunder
+would be divided among the judges, and nothing further would be
+said about it. But if an orator could achieve for himself such a
+reputation that the world would come and listen to him, if he could
+so speak that Rome should be made to talk about the trial, then
+might the judges be frightened into a true verdict. It may be
+understood, therefore, of what importance it was to obtain the
+services of a Cicero, or of a Hortensius, who was unrivalled at the
+Roman bar when Cicero began to plead.</p>
+
+<p>There were three special modes of oratory in which Cicero
+displayed his powers. He spoke either before the judges&mdash;a
+large body of judges who sat collected round the Pr&aelig;tor, as in the
+case of Sextus Roscius&mdash;or in cases of civil law before a
+single judge, selected by the Pr&aelig;tor, who sat with an assessor, as
+in the case of Roscius the actor, which shall be mentioned just
+now. This was the recognized work of his life, in which he was
+engaged, at any rate, in his earlier years; or he spoke to the
+populace, in what was called the Concio, or assembly of the
+people&mdash;speeches made before a crowd called together for a
+special purpose, as were the second and third orations against
+Catiline; or in the Senate, in which a political rather than a
+judicial sentence was sought from the votes of the Senators. There
+was a fourth mode of address, which in the days of the Emperors
+became common, when the advocate spoke "ad Principem;" that is, to
+the Emperor himself, or to some ruler acting for him as sole judge.
+It was thus that Cicero <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_95" id=
+"Page_95">95</a></span>pleaded before C&aelig;sar for Ligarius
+and for King Deiotarus, in the latter years of his life. In each of
+these a separate manner and a distinct line had to be adopted, in
+all of which he seems to have been equally happy, and equally
+powerful. In judging of his speeches, we are bound to remember that
+they were not probably uttered with their words arranged as we read
+them. Some of those we have were never spoken at all, as was the
+case with the five last Verrene orations, and with the second, by
+far the longest of the Philippics. Some, as was specially the case
+with the defence of Milo, the language of which is perhaps as
+perfect as that of any oration which has reached us from ancient or
+modern days, were only spoken in part; so that that which we read
+bears but small relation to that which was heard. All were probably
+retouched for publication.<a name="FNanchor_75_75" id=
+"FNanchor_75_75"></a><a href="#Footnote_75_75" class=
+"fnanchor">75</a> That words so perfect in their construction
+should have flowed from a man's mouth, often with but little
+preparation, we cannot conceive. But we know from the evidence of
+the day, and from the character which remained of him through after
+Roman ages, how great was the immediate effect of his oratory. We
+can imagine him, in this case of Sextus Roscius, standing out in
+the open air in the Forum, with the movable furniture of the court
+around him, the seats on which the judges sat with the Pr&aelig;tor in
+the midst of them, all Senators in their white robes, with broad
+purple borders. There too were seated, we may suppose on lower
+benches, the friends of the accused and the supporters of the
+accusation, and around, at the back of the orator, was such a crowd
+as he by the character of his eloquence may have drawn to the spot.
+Cicero was still a young man; but his name had made itself known
+and we can imagine that some tidings had got abroad as to <span
+class='pagenum'><a name="Page_96" id="Page_96">
+96</a></span>the bold words which would be spoken in reference to
+Sulla and Chrysogonus. The scene must have been very different from
+that of one of our dingy courts, in which the ermine is made
+splendid only by the purity and learning of the man who wears it.
+In Rome all exterior gifts were there. Cicero knew how to use them,
+so that the judges who made so large a part in the pageant should
+not dare to disgrace themselves because of its publicity.
+Quintilian gives his pupils much advice as to the way in which they
+should dress themselves<a name="FNanchor_76_76" id=
+"FNanchor_76_76"></a><a href="#Footnote_76_76" class=
+"fnanchor">76</a> and hold their togas&mdash;changing the folds
+of the garment so as to suit the different parts of the
+speech&mdash;how they should move their arms, and hold their heads,
+and turn their necks; even how they should comb their hair when
+they came to stand in public and plead at the bar. All these arts,
+with many changes, no doubt, as years rolled on, had come down to
+him from days before Cicero; but he always refers to Cicero as
+though his were the palmy days of Roman eloquence. We can well
+believe that Cicero had studied many of these arts by his
+twenty-seventh year&mdash;that he knew how to hold his toga and how
+to drop it&mdash;how to make the proper angle with his
+elbow&mdash;how to comb his hair, and yet not be a fop&mdash;and to
+add to the glory of his voice all the personal graces which were at
+his command.</p>
+
+<p>Sextus Roscius Amerinus, with all his misfortunes, injustices,
+and miseries, is now to us no more than the name of a fable; but to
+those who know it, the fable is, I think, more attractive than most
+novels.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_97" id="Page_97">
+97</a></span>We know that Cicero pleaded other causes before he
+went to Greece in the year 79 <span class="smcap">b.c.</span>,
+especially those for Publius Quintius, of which we have his speech,
+and that for a lady of Arretium, in which he defended her right to
+be regarded as a free woman of that city. In this speech he again
+attacked Sulla, the rights of the lady in question having been
+placed in jeopardy by an enactment made by the Dictator; and again
+Cicero was successful. This is not extant. Then he started on his
+travels, as to which I have already spoken. While he was absent
+Sulla died, and the condition of the Republic during his absence
+was anything but hopeful. Lepidus was Consul during these two
+years, than whom no weaker officer ever held rule in Rome&mdash;or
+rebelled against Rome; and Sertorius, who was in truth a great man,
+was in arms against Rome in Spain, as a rebel, though he was in
+truth struggling to create a new Roman power, which should be purer
+than that existing in Italy. What Cicero thought of the condition
+of his country at this time we have no means of knowing. If he then
+wrote letters, they have not been preserved. His spoken words speak
+plainly enough of the condition of the courts of law, and let us
+know how resolved he was to oppose himself to their iniquities. A
+young man may devote himself to politics with as much ardor as a
+senior, but he cannot do so if he be intent on a profession. It is
+only when his business is so well grasped by him as to sit easily
+on him, that he is able to undertake the second occupation.</p>
+
+<p>There is a rumor that Cicero, when he returned home from Greece,
+thought for awhile of giving himself up to philosophy, so that he
+was called Greek and Sophist in ridicule. It is not, however, to be
+believed that he ever for a moment abandoned the purpose he had
+formed for his own career. It will become evident as we go on with
+his life, that this so-called philosophy of the Greeks was never to
+him a matter of more than interesting inquiry. A full, active,
+human life, in which he might achieve for himself all the charms of
+high rank, gilded by intelligence, <span class='pagenum'><a name=
+"Page_98" id="Page_98">98</a></span>erudition, and refined
+luxury, in which also he might serve his country, his order, and
+his friends&mdash;just such a life as our leading men propose to
+themselves here, to-day, in our country&mdash;this is what Cicero
+had determined to achieve from his earliest years, and it was not
+likely that he should be turned from it by the pseudo logic of
+Greek philosophers. That the logic even of the Academy was false to
+him we have ample evidence, not only in his life but in his
+writings. There is a story that, during his travels, he consulted
+the oracle at Delphi as to his future career, and that on being
+told that he must look to his own genius and not to the opinion of
+the world at large, he determined to abandon the honors of the
+Republic. That he should have talked among the young men of the day
+of his philosophic investigations till they laughed at him and gave
+him a nickname, may be probable, but it cannot have been that he
+ever thought of giving up the bar.</p>
+
+<p>In the year of his return to Rome, when he was thirty, he
+married Terentia, a noble lady, of whom we are informed that she
+had a good fortune, and that her sister was one of the Vestal
+Virgins.<a name="FNanchor_77_77" id="FNanchor_77_77"></a><a href=
+"#Footnote_77_77" class="fnanchor">77</a> Her nobility is
+inferred from the fact that the virgins were, as a rule, chosen
+from the noble families, though the law required only that they
+should be the daughters of free parents, and of persons engaged in
+no mean pursuits. As to the more important question of Terentia's
+fortune there has never been a doubt. Plutarch, however, does not
+make it out to have been very great, assuming a sum which was equal
+to about &pound;4200 of our money. He tells us at the same time
+that Cicero's own fortune was less than &pound;4000. But in both of
+these statements, Plutarch, who was forced to take his facts where
+he could get them, and was not very <span class='pagenum'><a name=
+"Page_99" id="Page_99">99</a></span>particular in his
+authority, probably erred. The early education of Cicero, and the
+care taken to provide him with all that money could purchase, is, I
+think, conclusive of his father's wealth; and the mode of life
+adopted by Cicero shows that at no period did he think it necessary
+to live as men do live with small incomes.</p>
+
+<p>We shall find, as we go on, that he spent his money freely, as
+men did at Rome who had the command of large means. We are aware
+that he was often in debt. We find that from his letters. But he
+owed money not as a needy man does, but as one who is speculative,
+sanguine, and quite confident of his own resources. The management
+of incomes was not so fixed a thing then as it is with us now.
+Speculation was even more rampant, and rising men were willing and
+were able to become indebted for enormous sums, having no security
+to offer but the promise of their future career. C&aelig;sar's
+debts during various times of his life were proverbial. He is said
+to have owed over &pound;300,000 before he reached his first step
+in the public employment. Cicero rushed into no such danger as
+this. We know, indeed, that when the time came to him for public
+expenditure on a great scale, as, for instance, when he was filling
+the office of &AElig;dile, he kept within bounds, and he did not lavish
+money which he did not possess. We know also that he refrained,
+altogether refrained, from the iniquitous habits of making large
+fortunes which were open to the great politicians of the Republic.
+To be Qu&aelig;stor that he might be &AElig;dile, &AElig;dile that he might be
+Pr&aelig;tor and Consul, and Pr&aelig;tor and Consul that he might rob a
+province&mdash;pillage Sicily, Spain, or Asia, and then at last
+come back a rich man, rich enough to cope with all his creditors,
+and to bribe the judges should he be accused for his
+misdeeds&mdash;these were the usual steps to take by enterprising
+Romans toward power, wealth, and enjoyment. But it will be
+observed, in this sequence of circumstances, the robbery of the
+province was essential to success. This was sometimes done after so
+magnificent a fashion as to <span class='pagenum'><a name=
+"Page_100" id="Page_100">100</a></span>have become an immortal
+fact in history. The instance of Verres will be narrated in the
+next chapter but one. Something of moderation was more general, so
+that the fleeced provincial might still live, and prefer sufferance
+to the doubtful chances of recovery. A Proconsul might rob a
+great deal, and still return with hands apparently clean, bringing
+with him a score of provincial Deputies to laud his goodness before
+the citizens at home. But Cicero robbed not at all. Even they who
+have been most hard upon his name, accusing him of insincerity and
+sometimes of want of patriotism, because his Roman mode of
+declaring himself without reserve in his letters has been
+perpetuated for us by the excellence of their language, even they
+have acknowledged that he kept his hands studiously clean in the
+service of his country, when to have clean hands was so peculiar as
+to be regarded as absurd.</p>
+
+<p>There were other means in which a noble Roman might make money,
+and might do so without leaving the city. An orator might be paid
+for his services as an advocate. Cicero, had such a trade been
+opened to him, might have made almost any sum to which his
+imagination could have stretched itself. Such a trade was carried
+on to a very great extent. It was illegal, such payment having been
+forbidden by the "Lex Cincia De Muneribus," passed more than a
+century before Cicero began his pleadings.<a name="FNanchor_78_78"
+id="FNanchor_78_78"></a><a href="#Footnote_78_78" class=
+"fnanchor">78</a> But the law had become a dead letter in the
+majority of cases. There can be no doubt that Hortensius, the
+predecessor and great rival of Cicero, took presents, if not
+absolute payment. Indeed, the myth of honorary work, which is in
+itself absurd, was no more practicable in Rome than it has been
+found to be in England, where every barrister is theoretically
+presumed to work for nothing. That the "Lex Cincia," as far as the
+payment of advocates went, was absurd, may be allowed by us all.
+Services for which no regular payment <span class='pagenum'><a
+name="Page_101" id="Page_101">101</a></span>can be exacted
+will always cost more than those which have a defined price. But
+Cicero would not break the law. It has been hinted rather than
+stated that he, like other orators of the day, had his price. He
+himself tells us that he took nothing; and no instance has been
+adduced that he had ever done so. He is free enough in accusing
+Hortensius of having accepted a beautiful statuette, an ivory
+sphinx of great value. What he knew of Hortensius, Hortensius would
+have known of him, had it been there to know; and what Hortensius
+or others had heard would certainly have been told. As far as we
+can learn, there is no ground for accusing Cicero of taking fees or
+presents beyond the probability that he would do so. I think we are
+justified in believing that he did not do so, because those who
+watched his conduct closely found no opportunity of exposing him.
+That he was paid by different allied States for undertaking their
+protection in the Senate, is probable, such having been a custom
+not illegal. We know that he was specially charged with the affairs
+of Dyrrachium, and had probably amicable relations with other
+allied communities. This, however, must have been later in life,
+when his name was sufficiently high to insure the value of his
+services, and when he was a Senator.</p>
+
+<p>Noble Romans also&mdash;noble as they were, and infinitely
+superior to the little cares of trade&mdash;were accustomed to
+traffic very largely in usury. We shall have a terrible example of
+such baseness on the part of Brutus&mdash;that Brutus whom we have
+been taught to regard as almost on a par with Cato in purity. To
+lend money to citizens, or more profitably to allied States and
+cities, at enormous rates of interest, was the ordinary resource of
+a Roman nobleman in quest of revenue. The allied city, when
+absolutely eaten to the bone by one noble Roman, who had plundered
+it as Proconsul or Governor, would escape from its immediate
+embarrassment by borrowing money from another noble Roman, who
+would then grind its very bones in exacting his interest and his
+principal. Cicero, in the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_102"
+id="Page_102">102</a></span>most perfect of his
+works&mdash;the treatise De Officiis, an essay in which he
+instructs his son as to the way in which a man should endeavor to
+live so as to be a gentleman&mdash;inveighs both against trade and
+usury. When he tells us that they are to be accounted mean who buy
+in order that they may sell, we, with our later lights, do not
+quite agree with him, although he founds his assertion on an idea
+which is too often supported by the world's practice, namely, that
+men cannot do a retail business profitably without lying.<a name=
+"FNanchor_79_79" id="FNanchor_79_79"></a><a href="#Footnote_79_79"
+class="fnanchor">79</a> The doctrine, however, has always been
+common that retail trade is not compatible with noble bearing, and
+was practised by all Romans who aspired to be considered among the
+upper classes. That other and certainly baser means of making money
+by usury was, however, only too common. Crassus, the noted rich man
+of Rome in C&aelig;sar's day, who was one of the first Triumvirate,
+and who perished ignominiously in Parthia, was known to have
+gathered much of his wealth by such means. But against this Cicero
+is as staunchly severe as against shopkeeping. "First of all," he
+says, "these profits are despicable which incur the hatred of men,
+such as those of gatherers of custom and lenders of money on
+usury."<a name="FNanchor_80_80" id="FNanchor_80_80"></a><a href=
+"#Footnote_80_80" class="fnanchor">80</a></p>
+
+<p>Again, we are entitled to say that Cicero did not condescend to
+enrich himself by the means which he himself condemns, because, had
+he done so, the accusations made against him by his contemporaries
+would have reached our ears. Nor is it probable that a man in
+addressing his son as to rules of life would have spoken against a
+method of gathering riches which, <span class='pagenum'><a name=
+"Page_103" id="Page_103">103</a></span>had he practised it
+himself, must have been known to his son. His rules were severe as
+compared with the habits of the time. His dear friend Atticus did
+not so govern his conduct, or Brutus, who, when he wrote the De
+Officiis, was only less dear to him than Atticus. But Cicero
+himself seems to have done so faithfully. We learn from his letter
+that he owned house-property in Rome to a considerable extent,
+having probably thus invested his own money or that of his wife. He
+inherited also the family house at Arpinum. He makes it a matter
+for boasting that he had received in the course of his life by
+legacies nearly &pound;200,000 (twenty million sesterces), in
+itself a source of great income, and one common with Romans of high
+position.<a name="FNanchor_81_81" id="FNanchor_81_81"></a><a href=
+"#Footnote_81_81" class="fnanchor">81</a> Of the extent of his
+income it is impossible to speak, or even make a guess. But we do
+know that he lived always as a rich man&mdash;as one who regards
+such a condition of life as essentially proper to him; and that
+though he was often in debt, as was customary with noble Romans, he
+could always write about his debts in a vein of pleasantry, showing
+that they were not a heavy burden to him; and we know that he could
+at all times command for himself villas, books, statues, ornaments,
+columns, galleries, charming shades, and all the delicious
+appendages of mingled wealth and intelligence. He was as might be
+some English marquis, who, though up to his eyes in mortgages, is
+quite sure that he will never want any of the luxuries befitting a
+marquis. Though we have no authority to tell us how his condition
+of life became what it was, it is necessary that we should
+understand that condition if we are to get a clear insight into his
+life. Of that condition we have ample evidence. He commenced his
+career as a youth upon whose behalf nothing was spared, and when he
+settled himself in Rome, with the purport of winning for himself
+the highest honors of the Republic, he did so with the means of
+living like a nobleman.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_104" id="Page_104">
+104</a></span>But the point on which it is most necessary to
+insist is this: that while so many&mdash;I may almost say all
+around him in his own order&mdash;were unscrupulous as to their
+means of getting money, he kept his hands clean. The practice then
+was much as it is now. A gentleman in our days is supposed to have
+his hands clean; but there has got abroad among us a feeling that,
+only let a man rise high enough, soil will not stick to him. To rob
+is base; but if you rob enough, robbery will become heroism, or, at
+any rate, magnificence. With C&aelig;sar his debts have been
+accounted happy audacity; his pillage of Gaul and Spain, and of
+Rome also, have indicated only the success of the great General;
+his cruelty, which in cold-blooded efficiency has equalled if not
+exceeded the blood-thirstiness of any other tyrant, has been called
+clemency.<a name="FNanchor_82_82" id="FNanchor_82_82"></a><a href=
+"#Footnote_82_82" class="fnanchor">82</a> I do not mean to draw a
+parallel between C&aelig;sar and Cicero. No two men could have been
+more different in their natures or in their career. But the one has
+been lauded because he was unscrupulous, and the other has incurred
+reproach because, at every turn and twist in his life, scruples
+dominated him. I do not say that he always did what he thought to
+be right. A man who doubts much can never do that. The thing that
+was right to him in the thinking became wrong to him in the doing.
+That from which he has shrunk as evil when it was within his grasp,
+takes the color of good when it has been beyond his reach. Cicero
+had not the stuff in him to rule the Rome and the Romans of his
+period; but he was a man whose hands were free from all stain,
+either of blood or money; and for so much let him, at any rate,
+have the credit.</p>
+
+<p>Between the return of Cicero to Rome in 77 <span class=
+"smcap">b.c.</span> and his election as Qu&aelig;stor in 75, in which
+period he married Terentia, <span class='pagenum'><a name=
+"Page_105" id="Page_105">105</a></span>he made various
+speeches in different causes, of which only one remains to us, or
+rather, a small part of one. This is notable as having been spoken
+in behalf of that Roscius, the great comic actor, whose name has
+become familiar to us on account of his excellence, almost as have
+those of Garrick, of Siddons, and of Talma. It was a pleading as to
+the value of a slave, and the amount of pecuniary responsibility
+attaching to Roscius on account of the slave, who had been murdered
+when in his charge. As to the murder, no question is made. The
+slave was valuable, and the injury done to his master was a matter
+of importance. He, having been a slave, could have no stronger a
+claim for an injury done to himself than would a dog or a horse.
+The slave, whose name was Panurge&mdash;a name which has since been
+made famous as having been borrowed by Rabelais, probably from this
+occurrence, and given to his demon of mischief&mdash;showed
+aptitude for acting, and was therefore valuable. Then one Flavius
+killed him; why or how we do not know; and, having killed him,
+settled with Roscius for the injury by giving him a small farm. But
+Roscius had only borrowed or hired the man from one
+Ch&aelig;rea&mdash;or was in partnership with Ch&aelig;rea as to the
+man&mdash;and on that account paid something out of the value of
+the farm for the loss incurred; but the owner was not satisfied,
+and after a lapse of time made a further claim. Hence arose the
+action, in pleading which Cicero was successful. In the fragment we
+have of the speech there is nothing remarkable except the studied
+clearness of the language; but it reminds us of the opinion which
+Cicero had expressed of this actor in the oration which he made for
+Publius Quintius, who was the brother-in-law of Roscius. "He is
+such an actor," says Cicero, "that there is none other on the stage
+worthy to be seen; and such a man that among men he is the last
+that should have become an actor."<a name="FNanchor_83_83" id=
+"FNanchor_83_83"></a><a href="#Footnote_83_83" class=
+"fnanchor">83</a> The orator's praise of the actor is not of much
+importance. Had not Roscius <span class='pagenum'><a name=
+"Page_106" id="Page_106">106</a></span>been great in his
+profession, his name would not have come down to later ages. Nor is
+it now matter of great interest that the actor should have been
+highly praised as a man by his advocate; but it is something for us
+to know that the stage was generally held in such low repute as to
+make it seem to be a pity that a good man should have taken himself
+to such a calling.</p>
+
+<p>In the year 76 <span class="smcap">b.c.</span> Cicero became
+father of a daughter, whom we shall know as Tullia&mdash;who, as
+she grew up, became the one person whom he loved best in all the
+world&mdash;and was elected Qu&aelig;stor. Cicero tells us of himself
+that in the preceding year he had solicited the Qu&aelig;storship, when
+Cotta was candidate for the Consulship and Hortensius for the
+Pr&aelig;torship. There are in the dialogue De Claris
+Oratoribus&mdash;which has had the name of Brutus always given to
+it&mdash;some passages in which the orator tells us more of himself
+than in any other of his works. I will annex a translation of a
+small portion because of its intrinsic interest; but I will
+relegate it to an appendix, because it is too long either for
+insertion in the text or for a note.<a name="FNanchor_84_84" id=
+"FNanchor_84_84"></a><a href="#Footnote_84_84" class=
+"fnanchor">84</a></p>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_107" id="Page_107">
+107</a></span></p>
+
+<h3><a name="CHAPTER_V" id="CHAPTER_V"></a><span class="smcap">Chapter V.</span></h3>
+
+<h4><i>CICERO AS QU&AElig;STOR.</i></h4>
+
+<p>Cicero was elected Qu&aelig;stor in his thirtieth year, <span class=
+"smcap">b.c.</span> 76. He was then nearly thirty-one. His
+predecessors and rivals at the bar, Cotta and Hortensius, were
+elected Consul and Pr&aelig;tor, respectively, in the same year. To
+become Qu&aelig;stor at the earliest age allowed by the law (at
+thirty-one, namely) was the ambition of the Roman advocate who
+purposed to make his fortune by serving the State. To act as
+Qu&aelig;stor in his thirty-second year, &AElig;dile in his thirty-seventh,
+Pr&aelig;tor in his forty-first, and Consul in his forty-fourth year,
+was to achieve, in the earliest succession allowed by law, all the
+great offices of trust, power, and future emolument. The great
+reward of proconsular rapine did not generally come till after the
+last step, though there were notable instances in which a
+Propr&aelig;tor with proconsular authority could make a large fortune,
+as we shall learn when we come to deal with Verres, and though
+&AElig;diles, and even Qu&aelig;stors, could find pickings. It was therefore
+a great thing for a man to begin as early as the law would permit,
+and to lose as few years as possible in reaching the summit. Cicero
+lost none. As he himself tells us in the passage to which I have
+referred in the last chapter, and which is to be found in the
+Appendix, he gained the good-will of men&mdash;that is, of free
+Romans who had the suffrage, and who could therefore vote either
+for him or against him&mdash;by the assiduity of his attention to
+the cases which he undertook, and by a certain <span class=
+'pagenum'><a name="Page_108" id="Page_108">
+108</a></span>brilliancy of speech which was new to them.<a name=
+"FNanchor_85_85" id="FNanchor_85_85"></a><a href="#Footnote_85_85"
+class="fnanchor">85</a> Putting his hand strenuously to the
+plough, allowing himself to be diverted by none of those luxuries
+to which Romans of his day were so wont to give way, he earned his
+purpose by a resolution to do his very best. He was "Novus
+Homo"&mdash;a man, that is, belonging to a family of which no
+member had as yet filled high office in the State. Against such
+there was a strong prejudice with the aristocracy, who did not like
+to see the good things of the Republic dispersed among an increased
+number of hands. The power of voting was common to all Roman male
+citizens; but the power of influencing the electors had passed very
+much into the hands of the rich. The admiration which Cicero had
+determined to elicit would not go very far, unless it could be
+produced in a very high degree. A Verres could get himself made
+Pr&aelig;tor; a Lepidus some years since could receive the Consulship;
+or now an Antony, or almost a Catiline. The candidate would borrow
+money on the security of his own audacity, and would thus
+succeed&mdash;perhaps with some minor gifts of eloquence, if he
+could achieve them. With all this, the borrowing and the spending
+of money, that is, with direct bribery, Cicero would have nothing
+to do; but of the art of canvassing&mdash;that art by which he
+could at the moment make himself beloved by the citizens who had a
+vote to give&mdash;he was a profound master.</p>
+
+<p>There is a short treatise, De Petitione Consulatus, on
+canvassing for the Consulship, of which mention may be made here,
+because all the tricks of the trade were as essential to him, when
+looking to be Qu&aelig;stor, as when he afterward desired to be Consul,
+and because the political doings of his life will hurry us on too
+quickly in the days of his Consulship to admit of our referring to
+these lessons. This little piece, of which we have only a fragment,
+is supposed to have been addressed <span class='pagenum'><a name=
+"Page_109" id="Page_109">109</a></span>to Cicero by his
+brother Quintus, giving fraternal advice as to the then coming
+great occasion. The critics say that it was retouched by the orator
+himself. The reader who has studied Cicero's style will think that
+the retouching went to a great extent, or that the two brothers
+were very like each other in their power of expression.</p>
+
+<p>The first piece of advice was no doubt always in Cicero's mind,
+not only when he looked for office, but whenever he addressed a
+meeting of his fellow-citizens. "Bethink yourself what is this
+Republic; what it is you seek to be in it, and who you are that
+seek it. As you go down daily to the Forum, turn the answer to this
+in your mind: 'Novus sum; consulatum peto; Roma est'&mdash;'I am a
+man of an untried family. It is the Consulship that I seek. It is
+Rome in which I seek it.'" Though the condition of Rome was bad,
+still to him the Republic was the greatest thing in the world, and
+to be Consul in that Republic the highest honor which the world
+could give.</p>
+
+<p>There is nobility in that, but there is very much that is
+ignoble in the means of canvassing which are advocated. I cannot
+say that they are as yet too ignoble for our modern use here in
+England, but they are too ignoble to be acknowledged by our
+candidates themselves, or by their brothers on their behalf.
+Cicero, not having progressed far enough in modern civilization to
+have studied the beauty of truth, is held to be false and
+hypocritical. We who know so much more than he did, and have the
+doctrine of truth at our fingers' ends, are wise enough to declare
+nothing of our own shortcomings, but to attribute such malpractices
+only to others. "It is a good thing to be thought worthy of the
+rank we seek by those who are in possession of it." Make yourself
+out to be an aristocrat, he means. "Canvass them, and cotton to
+them. Make them believe that in matters of politics you have always
+been with the aristocracy, never with the mob;" that if "you have
+at all spoken a word in public to tickle the people, you have done
+so for the sake of gaining Pompey." As to this, it is necessary
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_110" id="Page_110">
+110</a></span>to understand Pompey's peculiar popularity at the
+moment, both with the Liberals and with the Conservatives. "Above
+all, see that you have with you the 'jeunesse dor&eacute;e.' They
+carry so much! There are many with you already. Take care that they
+shall know how much you think of them."</p>
+
+<p>He is especially desired to make known to the public the
+iniquities of Catiline, his opponent, as to whom Quintus says that,
+though he has lately been acquitted in regard to his speculations
+in Africa, he has had to bribe the judges so highly that he is now
+as poor as they were before they got their plunder. At every word
+we read we are tempted to agree with Mommsen that on the Roman
+oligarchy of the period no judgment can be passed save one, "of
+inexorable condemnation."<a name="FNanchor_86_86" id=
+"FNanchor_86_86"></a><a href="#Footnote_86_86" class=
+"fnanchor">86</a></p>
+
+<p>"Remember," says Quintus, "that your candidature is very strong
+in that kind of friendship which has been created by your
+pleadings. Take care that each of those friends shall know what
+special business is allotted to him on the occasion; and as you
+have not troubled any of them yet, make them understand that you
+have reserved for the present moment the payment of their debts."
+This is all very well; but the next direction mingles so much of
+business with its truth, that no one but Machiavelli or Quintus
+Cicero could have expressed it in words. "Men," says Quintus, "are
+induced to struggle for us in these canvassings by three
+motives&mdash;by memory of kindness done, by the hope of kindness
+to come, and by community of political conviction. You must see how
+you are to catch each of these. Small favors will induce a man to
+canvass for you; and they who owe their safety to your pleadings,
+for there are many such, are aware that if they do not stand by you
+now they will be regarded by all the world as sorry fellows.
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_111" id="Page_111">111</a></span>
+Nevertheless, they should be made to feel that, as they are
+indebted to you, you will be glad to have an opportunity of
+becoming indebted to them. But as to those on whom you have a hold
+only by hope&mdash;a class of men very much more numerous, and
+likely to be very much more active&mdash;they are the men whom you
+should make to understand that your assistance will be always at
+their command."</p>
+
+<p>How severe, how difficult was the work of canvassing in Rome, we
+learn from these lessons. It was the very essence of a great
+Roman's life that he should live in public; and to such an extent
+was this carried that we wonder how such a man as Cicero found time
+for the real work of his life. The Roman patron was expected to
+have a levee every morning early in his own house, and was wont,
+when he went down into the Forum, to be attended by a crowd of
+parasites. This had become so much a matter of course that a public
+man would have felt himself deserted had he been left alone either
+at home or abroad. Rome was full of idlers&mdash;of men who got
+their bread by the favors of the great, who lounged through their
+lives&mdash;political quidnuncs, who made canvassing a
+trade&mdash;men without a conviction, but who believed in the
+ascendency of this or the other leader, and were ready to fawn or
+to fight in the streets, as there might be need. These were the
+Quirites of the day&mdash;men who were in truth fattened on the
+leavings of the plunder which was extracted from the allies; for it
+was the case now that a Roman was content to live on the industry
+of those whom his father had conquered. They would still fight in
+the legions; but the work of Rome was done by slaves, and the
+wealth of Rome was robbed from the Provinces. Hence it came about
+that there was a numerous class, to whom the name "assectatores"
+was given, who of course became specially prominent at elections.
+Quintus divides all such followers into three kinds, and gives
+instructions as to the special treatment to be applied to each.
+"There are those who come to pay their respects to you at your own
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_112" id="Page_112">112</a></span>
+house"&mdash;"Salutatores" they were called; "then
+those who go down with you into the Forum"&mdash;"Deductores;" "and
+after these the third, the class of constant
+followers"&mdash;"Assectatores," as they were specially named. "As
+to the first, who are the least in consequence, and who, according
+to our present ways of living, come in great numbers, you should
+take care to let them know that their doing even so much as this is
+much esteemed by you. Let them perceive that you note it when they
+come, and say as much to their friends, who will repeat your words.
+Tell themselves often if it be possible. In this way men, when
+there are many candidates, will observe that there is one who has
+his eyes open to these courtesies, and they will give themselves
+heart and soul to him, neglecting all others. And mind you, when
+you find that a man does but pretend, do not let him perceive that
+you have perceived it. Should any one wish to excuse himself,
+thinking that he is suspected of indifference, swear that you have
+never doubted him, nor had occasion to doubt.</p>
+
+<p>"As to the work of the 'Deductores,' who go out with
+you&mdash;as it is much more severe than that of those who merely
+come to pay their compliments, let them understand that you feel it
+to be so, and, as far as possible, be ready to go into town with
+them at fixed hours." Quintus here means that the "Deductores" are
+not to be kept waiting for the patron longer than can be helped.
+"The attendance of a daily crowd in taking you down to the Forum
+gives a great show of character and dignity.</p>
+
+<p>"Then come the band of followers which accompanies you
+diligently wherever you go. As to those who do this without special
+obligation, take care that they should know how much you think of
+them. From those who owe it to you as a duty, exact it rigorously.
+See that they who can come themselves do come themselves, and that
+they who cannot, send others in their places." What an idea does
+this give as to the labor of a candidate in Rome! I can imagine it
+to be worse even than <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_113" id=
+"Page_113">113</a></span>the canvassing of an English borough,
+which to a man of spirit and honor is the most degrading of all
+existing employments not held to be absolutely disgraceful.</p>
+
+<p>Quintus then goes on from the special management of friends to
+the general work of canvassing. "It requires the remembering of
+men's names"&mdash;"nomenclationem," a happy word we do not
+possess&mdash;"flattery, diligence, sweetness of temper, good
+report, and a high standing in the Republic. Let it be seen that
+you have been at the trouble to remember people, and practise
+yourself to it so that the power may increase with you. There is
+nothing so alluring to the citizen as that. If there be a softness
+which you have not by nature, so affect it that it shall seem to be
+your own naturally. You have indeed a way with you which is not
+unbecoming to a good-natured man; but you must caress
+men&mdash;which is in truth vile and sordid at other times, but is
+absolutely necessary at elections. It is no doubt a mean thing to
+flatter some low fellow, but when it is necessary to make a friend
+it can be pardoned. A candidate must do it, whose face and look and
+tongue should be made to suit those he has to meet. What
+perseverance means I need not tell you. The word itself explains
+itself. As a matter of course, you shall not leave the city; but it
+is not enough for you to stick to your work in Rome and in the
+Forum. You must seek out the voters and canvass them separately;
+and take care that no one shall ask from another what it is that
+you want from him. Let it have been solicited by yourself, and
+often solicited." Quintus seems to have understood the business
+well, and the elder brother no doubt profited by the younger
+brother's care.</p>
+
+<p>It was so they did it at Rome. That men should have gone through
+all this in search of plunder and wealth does not strike us as
+being marvellous, or even out of place. A vile object justifies
+vile means. But there were some at Rome who had it in their hearts
+really to serve their country, and with whom it was at the same
+time a matter of conscience that, in serving <span class=
+'pagenum'><a name="Page_114" id="Page_114">114</a></span>their
+country, they would not dishonestly or dishonorably enrich
+themselves. There was still a grain of salt left. But even this
+could not make itself available for useful purpose without having
+recourse to tricks such as these!</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote"><span class="smcap">b.c.</span> 75,
+&aelig;tat 32.</div>
+
+<p>In his proper year Cicero became Qu&aelig;stor, and had assigned to
+him by lot the duty of looking after the Western Division of
+Sicily. For Sicily, though but one province as regarded general
+condition, being under one governor with proconsular authority,
+retained separate modes of government, or, rather, varied forms of
+subjection to Rome, especially in matters of taxation, according as
+it had or had not been conquered from the Carthaginians.<a name=
+"FNanchor_87_87" id="FNanchor_87_87"></a><a href="#Footnote_87_87"
+class="fnanchor">87</a> Cicero was quartered at Lilyb&aelig;um, on the
+west, whereas the other Qu&aelig;stor was placed at Syracuse, in the
+east. There were at that time twenty Qu&aelig;stors elected annually,
+some of whom remained in Rome; but most of the number were
+stationed about the Empire, there being always one as assistant to
+each Proconsul. When a Consul took the field with an army, he
+always had a Qu&aelig;stor with him. This had become the case so
+generally that the Qu&aelig;stor became, as it were, something between a
+private secretary and a senior lieutenant to a governor. The
+arrangement came to have a certain sanctity attached to it, as
+though there was something in the connection warmer and closer than
+that of mere official life; so that a Qu&aelig;stor has been called a
+Proconsul's son for the time, and was supposed to feel that
+reverence and attachment that a son entertains for his father.</p>
+
+<p>But to Cicero, and to young Qu&aelig;stors in general, the great
+attraction of the office consisted in the fact that the aspirant
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_115" id="Page_115">
+115</a></span>having once become a Qu&aelig;stor was a Senator for the
+rest of his life, unless he should be degraded by misconduct.
+Gradually it had come to pass that the Senate was replenished by
+the votes of the people, not directly, but by the admission into
+the Senate of the popularly elected magistrates. There were in the
+time of Cicero between 500 and 600 members of this body. The
+numbers down to the time of Sulla had been increased or made up by
+direct selection by the old Kings, or by the Censors, or by some
+Dictator, such as was Sulla; and the same thing was done afterward
+by Julius C&aelig;sar. The years between Sulla's Dictatorship and
+that of C&aelig;sar were but thirty&mdash;from 79 to 49 <span
+class="smcap">b.c.</span> These, however, were the years in which
+Cicero dreamed that the Republic could be re-established by means
+of an honest Senate, which Senate was then to be kept alive by the
+constant infusion of new blood, accruing to it from the entrance of
+magistrates who had been chosen by the people. Tacitus tells us
+that it was with this object that Sulla had increased the number of
+Qu&aelig;stors.<a name="FNanchor_88_88" id="FNanchor_88_88"></a><a href=
+"#Footnote_88_88" class="fnanchor">88</a>Cicero's hopes&mdash;his
+futile hopes of what an honest Senate might be made to
+do&mdash;still ran high, although at the very time in which he was
+elected Qu&aelig;stor he was aware that the judges, then elected from
+the Senate, were so corrupt that their judgment could not be
+trusted. Of this popular mode of filling the Senate he speaks
+afterward in his treatise De Legibus. "From those who have acted as
+magistrates the Senate is composed&mdash;a measure altogether in
+the popular interest, as no one can now reach the highest
+rank"&mdash;namely, the Senate&mdash;"except by the votes of the
+people, all power of selecting having been taken away from the
+Censors."<a name="FNanchor_89_89" id="FNanchor_89_89"></a><a href=
+"#Footnote_89_89" class="fnanchor">89</a> In his pleadings for P.
+Sextus he makes the same boast as to old times, not with absolute
+accuracy, as far as we can understand the old constitution, but
+with the same <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_116" id=
+"Page_116">116</a></span>passionate ardor as to the body.
+"Romans, when they could no longer endure the rule of kings,
+created annual magistrates, but after such fashion that the Council
+of the Senate was set over the Republic for its guidance. Senators
+were chosen for that work by the entire people, and the entrance to
+that order was opened to the virtue and to the industry of the
+citizens at large."<a name="FNanchor_90_90" id=
+"FNanchor_90_90"></a><a href="#Footnote_90_90" class=
+"fnanchor">90</a> When defending Cluentius, he expatiates on the
+glorious privileges of the Roman Senate. "Its high place, its
+authority, its splendor at home, its name and fame abroad, the
+purple robe, the ivory chair, the appanage of office, the fasces,
+the army with its command, the government of the provinces!"<a
+name="FNanchor_91_91" id="FNanchor_91_91"></a><a href=
+"#Footnote_91_91" class="fnanchor">91</a> On that splendor "apud
+exteras gentes," he expatiates in one of his attacks upon Verres.<a
+name="FNanchor_92_92" id="FNanchor_92_92"></a><a href=
+"#Footnote_92_92" class="fnanchor">92</a> From all this will be
+seen Cicero's idea of the chamber into which he had made his way as
+soon as he had been chosen Qu&aelig;stor.</p>
+
+<p>In this matter, which was the pivot on which his whole life
+turned&mdash;the character, namely, of the Roman Senate&mdash;it
+cannot but be observed that he was wont to blow both hot and cold.
+It was his nature to do so, not from any aptitude for deceit, but
+because he was sanguine and vacillating&mdash;because he now
+aspired and now despaired. He blew hot and cold in regard to the
+Senate, because at times he would feel it to be what it
+was&mdash;composed, for the most part, of men who were time-serving
+and corrupt, willing to sell themselves for a price to any buyer;
+and then, again, at times he would think of the Senate as endowed
+with all those privileges which he names, and would dream that
+under his influence it would become what it should be&mdash;such a
+Senate as he believed it to have been in its old palmy days. His
+praise of the Senate, his description of what it should be and
+might be, I have given. <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_117"
+id="Page_117">117</a></span>To the other side of the picture
+we shall come soon, when I shall have to show how, at the trial of
+Verres, he declared before the judges themselves how terrible had
+been the corruption of the judgment-seat in Rome since, by Sulla's
+enactment, it had been occupied only by the Senators. One passage I
+will give now, in order that the reader may see by the
+juxtaposition of the words that he could denounce the Senate as
+loudly as he would vaunt its privileges. In the column on the left
+hand in the note I quote the words with which, in the first
+pleading against Verres, he declared "that every base and
+iniquitous thing done on the judgment-seat during the ten years
+since the power of judging had been transferred to the Senate
+should be not only denounced by him, but also proved;" and in that
+on the right I will repeat the noble phrases which he afterward
+used in the speech for Cluentius when he chose to speak well of the
+order.<a name="FNanchor_93_93" id="FNanchor_93_93"></a><a href=
+"#Footnote_93_93" class="fnanchor">93</a></p>
+
+<p>It was on the Senate that they who wished well for Rome must
+depend&mdash;on the Senate, chosen, refreshed, and replenished from
+among the people; on a body which should be at the same time august
+and popular&mdash;as far removed on the one side from the tyranny
+of individuals as on the other from the violence of the mob; but on
+a Senate freed from its corruption and dirt, on a body of noble
+Romans, fitted by their individual character and high rank to rule
+and to control their fellow-citizens. This was Cicero's idea, and
+this the state of things which he endeavored to achieve. No doubt
+he dreamed that his own eloquence and his own example might do more
+in producing this than is given to men to achieve by such <span
+class='pagenum'><a name="Page_118" id="Page_118">
+118</a></span>means. No doubt there was conceit in
+this&mdash;conceit and perhaps, vanity. It has to be admitted that
+Cicero always exaggerated his own powers. But the ambition was
+great, the purpose noble, and the course of his whole life was such
+as to bring no disgrace on his aspirations. He did not thunder
+against the judges for taking bribes, and then plunder a province
+himself. He did not speak grandly of the duty of a patron to his
+clients, and then open his hands to illicit payments. He did not
+call upon the Senate for high duty, and then devote himself to
+luxury and pleasure. He had a <i>beau ideal</i> of the manner in
+which a Roman Senator should live and work, and he endeavored to
+work and live up to that ideal. There was no period after his
+Consulship in which he was not aware of his own failure.
+Nevertheless, with constant labor, but with intermittent struggles,
+he went on, till, at the end, in the last fiery year of his
+existence, he taught himself again to think that even yet there was
+a chance. How he struggled, and in struggling perished, we shall
+see by-and-by.</p>
+
+<p>What Cicero did as Qu&aelig;stor in Sicily we have no means of
+knowing. His correspondence does not go back so far. That he was
+very active, and active for good, we have two testimonies, one of
+which is serious, convincing, and most important as an episode in
+his life. The other consists simply of a good story, told by
+himself of himself; not intended at all for his own glorification,
+but still carrying with it a certain weight. As to the first:
+Cicero was Qu&aelig;stor in Lilyb&aelig;um in the thirty-second year of his
+life. In the thirty-seventh year he was elected &AElig;dile, and was
+then called upon by the Sicilians to attack Verres on their behalf.
+Verres was said to have carried off from Sicily plunder to the
+amount of nearly &pound;400,000,<a name="FNanchor_94_94" id=
+"FNanchor_94_94"></a><a href="#Footnote_94_94" class=
+"fnanchor">94</a> <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_119" id=
+"Page_119">119</a></span>after a misrule of three years'
+duration. All Sicily was ruined. Beyond its pecuniary losses, its
+sufferings had been excruciating; but not till the end had come of
+a Governor's proconsular authority could the almost hopeless chance
+of a criminal accusation against the tyrant be attempted. The
+tyrant would certainly have many friends in Rome. The injured
+provincials would probably have none of great mark. A man because
+he had been Qu&aelig;stor was not, necessarily, one having influence,
+unless he belonged to some great family. This was not the case with
+Cicero. But he had made for himself such a character during his
+year of office that the Sicilians declared that, if they could
+trust themselves to any man at Rome, it would be to their former
+Qu&aelig;stor. It had been a part of his duty to see that the proper
+supply of corn was collected in the island and sent to Rome. A
+great portion of the bread eaten in Rome was grown in Sicily, and
+much of it was supplied in the shape of a tax. It was the hateful
+practice of Rome to extract the means of living from her colonies,
+so as to spare her own laborers. To this, hard as it was, the
+Sicilians were well used. They knew the amount required of them by
+law, and were glad enough when they could be quit in payment of the
+dues which the law required; but they were seldom blessed by such
+moderation on the part of their rulers. To what extent this special
+tax could be stretched we shall see when we come to the details of
+the trial of Verres. It is no doubt only from Cicero's own words
+that we learn that, though he sent to Rome plenteous supplies, he
+was just to the dealer, liberal to the pawns, and forbearing to the
+allies generally; and that when he took his departure they paid him
+honors hitherto unheard of.<a name="FNanchor_95_95" id=
+"FNanchor_95_95"></a><a href="#Footnote_95_95" class=
+"fnanchor">95</a> But I think we may take it for granted that
+this statement is true; firstly, because it has never been
+contradicted; and then from the fact that the Sicilians all came to
+him in the day of their distress.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_120" id="Page_120">
+120</a></span>As to the little story to which I have alluded, it
+has been told so often since Cicero told it himself, that I am
+almost ashamed to repeat it. It is, however, too emblematic of the
+man, gives us too close an insight both into his determination to
+do his duty and to his pride&mdash;conceit, if you will&mdash;at
+having done it, to be omitted. In his speech for Plancius<a name=
+"FNanchor_96_96" id="FNanchor_96_96"></a><a href="#Footnote_96_96"
+class="fnanchor">96</a> he tells us that by chance, coming direct
+from Sicily after his Qu&aelig;storship, he found himself at Puteoli
+just at the season when the fashion from Rome betook itself to that
+delightful resort. He was full of what he had done&mdash;how he had
+supplied Rome with corn, but had done so without injury to the
+Sicilians, how honestly he had dealt with the merchants, and had in
+truth won golden opinions on all sides&mdash;so much so that he
+thought that when he reached the city the citizens in a mob would
+be ready to receive him. Then at Puteoli he met two acquaintances.
+"Ah," says one to him, "when did you leave Rome? What news have you
+brought?" Cicero, drawing his head up, as we can see him, replied
+that he had just returned from his province. "Of course, just back
+from Africa," said the other. "Not so," said Cicero, bridling in
+anger&mdash;"stomachans fastidiose," as he describes it
+himself&mdash;"but from Sicily." Then the other lounger, a fellow
+who pretended to know everything, put in his word. "Do you not know
+that our Cicero has been Qu&aelig;stor at Syracuse?" The reader will
+remember that he had been Qu&aelig;stor in the other division of the
+island, at Lilyb&aelig;um. "There was no use in thinking any more about
+it," says Cicero. "I gave up being angry and determined to be like
+any one else, just one at the waters." Yes, he had been very
+conceited, and well understood his own fault of character in that
+respect; but he would not have shown his conceit in that matter had
+he not resolved to do his duty in a manner uncommon then among
+Qu&aelig;stors, and been conscious that he had done it.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_121" id="Page_121">
+121</a></span>Perhaps there is no more certain way of judging a
+man than from his own words, if his real words be in our
+possession. In doing so, we are bound to remember how strong will
+be the bias of every man's mind in his own favor, and for that
+reason a judicious reader will discount a man's praise of himself.
+But the reader, to get at the truth, if he be indeed judicious,
+will discount them after a fashion conformable with the nature of
+the man whose character he is investigating. A reader will not be
+judicious who imagines that what a man says of his own praises must
+be false, or that all which can be drawn from his own words in his
+own dispraise must be true. If a man praise himself for honor,
+probity, industry, and patriotism, he will at any rate show that
+these virtues are dear to him, unless the course of his life has
+proved him to be altogether a hypocrite in such utterances. It has
+not been presumed that Cicero was a hypocrite in these utterances.
+He was honest and industrious; he did appreciate honor and love his
+country. So much is acknowledged; and yet it is supposed that what
+good he has told us of himself is false. If a man doubt of himself
+constantly; if in his most private intercourse and closest familiar
+utterances he admit occasionally his own human weakness; if he find
+himself to have failed at certain moments, and says so, the very
+feelings that have produced such confessions are proof that the
+highest points which have not been attained have been seen and
+valued. A man will not sorrowfully regret that he has won only a
+second place, or a third, unless he be alive to the glory of the
+first. But Cicero's acknowledgments have all been taken as proof
+against himself. All manner of evil is argued against him from his
+own words, when an ill meaning can be attached to them; but when he
+speaks of his great aspirations, he is ridiculed for bombast and
+vanity. On the strength of some perhaps unconsidered expression, in
+a letter to Atticus, he is condemned for treachery, whereas the
+sentences in which he has thoughtfully declared the purposes of his
+very soul are counted as clap-traps.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_122" id="Page_122">
+122</a></span>No one has been so frequently condemned out of his
+mouth as Cicero, and naturally. In these modern days we have
+contemporary records as to prominent persons. Of the characters of
+those who lived in long-past ages we generally fail to have any
+clear idea, because we lack those close chronicles which are
+necessary for the purpose. What insight have we into the
+personality of Alexander the Great, or what insight had Plutarch,
+who wrote about him? As to Samuel Johnson, we seem to know every
+turn of his mind, having had a Boswell. Alexander had no Boswell.
+But here is a man belonging to those past ages of which I speak who
+was his own Boswell, and after such a fashion that, since letters
+were invented, no records have ever been written in language more
+clear or more attractive. It is natural that we should judge out of
+his own mouth one who left so many more words behind him than did
+any one else, particularly one who left words so pleasant to read.
+And all that he wrote was after some fashion about himself. His
+letters, like all letters, are personal to himself. His speeches
+are words coming out of his own mouth about affairs in which he was
+personally engaged and interested. His rhetoric consists of lessons
+given by himself about his own art, founded on his own experience,
+and on his own observation of others. His so-called philosophy
+gives us the workings of his own mind. No one has ever told the
+world so much about another person as Cicero has told the world
+about Cicero. Boswell pales before him as a chronicler of minuti&aelig;.
+It may be a matter of small interest now to the bulk of readers to
+be intimately acquainted with a Roman who was never one of the
+world's conquerors. It may be well for those who desire to know
+simply the facts of the world's history, to dismiss as unnecessary
+the aspirations of one who lived so long ago. But if it be worth
+while to discuss the man's character, it must be worth while to
+learn the truth about it.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh that mine adversary had written a book!" Who does <span
+class='pagenum'><a name="Page_123" id="Page_123">
+123</a></span>not understand the truth of these words! It is
+always out of a man's mouth that you may most surely condemn him.
+Cicero wrote many books, and all about himself. He has been honored
+very highly. Middleton, in the preface to his own biography, which,
+with all its charms, has become a bye-word for eulogy quotes the
+opinion of Erasmus, who tells us that he loves the writings of the
+man "not only for the divine felicity of his style, but for the
+sanctity of his heart and morals." This was the effect left on the
+mind of an accurate thinker and most just man. But then also has
+Cicero been spoken of with the bitterest scorn. From Dio Cassius,
+who wrote two hundred and twenty years after Christ, down to Mr.
+Froude, whose C&aelig;sar has just been published, he has had such
+hard things said of him by men who have judged him out of his own
+mouth, that the reader does not know how to reconcile what he now
+reads with the opinion of men of letters who lived and wrote in the
+century next after his death&mdash;with the testimony of such a man
+as Erasmus, and with the hearty praises of his biographer,
+Middleton. The sanctity of his heart and morals! It was thus that
+Erasmus was struck in reading his works. It is a feeling of that
+kind, I profess, that has induced me to take this work in
+hand&mdash;a feeling produced altogether by the study of his own
+words. It has seemed to be that he has loved men so well, has been
+so anxious for the true, has been so capable of honesty when
+dishonesty was common among all around him, has been so jealous in
+the cause of good government, has been so hopeful when there has
+been but little ground for hope, as to have deserved a reputation
+for sanctity of heart and morals.</p>
+
+<p>Of the speeches made by Cicero as advocate after his
+Qu&aelig;storship, and before those made in the accusation of Verres, we
+have the fragment only of the second of two spoken in defence of
+Marcus Tullius Decula, whom we may suppose to have been distantly
+connected with his family. He does not avow any relationship.
+"What," he says, in opening his argument, <span class='pagenum'><a
+name="Page_124" id="Page_124">124</a></span>"does it become
+me, a Tullius, to do for this other Tullius, a man not only my
+friend, but my namesake?" It was a matter of no great importance,
+as it was addressed to judges not so called, but to
+"recuperatores," judges chosen by the Pr&aelig;tor, and who acted in
+lighter cases.</p>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_125" id="Page_125">
+125</a></span></p>
+
+<h3><a name="CHAPTER_VI" id="CHAPTER_VI"></a><span class="smcap">Chapter VI.</span></h3>
+
+<h4><i>VERRES.</i></h4>
+
+<p>There are six episodes, or, as I may say, divisions in the life
+of Cicero to which special interest attaches itself. The first is
+the accusation against Verres, in which he drove the miscreant
+howling out of the city. The second is his Consulship, in which he
+drove Catiline out of the city, and caused certain other
+conspirators who were joined with the arch rebel to be killed,
+either legally or illegally. The third was his exile, in which he
+himself was driven out of Rome. The fourth was a driving out, too,
+though of a more honorable kind, when he was compelled, much
+against his will, to undertake the government of a province. The
+fifth was C&aelig;sar's passing of the Rubicon, the battle of
+Pharsalia, and his subsequent adherence to C&aelig;sar. The last
+was his internecine combat with Antony, which produced the
+Philippics, and that memorable series of letters in which he strove
+to stir into flames the expiring embers of the Republic. The
+literary work with which we are acquainted is spread, but spread
+very unequally, over his whole life. I have already told the story
+of Sextus Roscius Amerinus, having taken it from his own words.
+From that time onward he wrote continually; but the fervid stream
+of his eloquence came forth from him with unrivalled rapidity in
+the twenty last miserable months of his life.</p>
+
+<p>We have now come to the first of those episodes, and I have to
+tell the way in which Cicero struggled with Verres, and how he
+conquered him. In 74 <span class="smcap">b.c.</span> Verres was
+Pr&aelig;tor in Rome. At that period of the Republic there were eight
+Pr&aelig;tors elected <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_126" id=
+"Page_126">126</a></span>annually, two of whom remained in the
+city, whereas the others were employed abroad, generally with the
+armies of the Empire. In the next year, 73 <span class=
+"smcap">b.c.</span>, Verres went in due course to Sicily with
+proconsular or propr&aelig;torial authority, having the government
+assigned to him for twelve months. This was usual and
+constitutional, but it was not unusual, even if unconstitutional,
+that this period should be prolonged. In the case of Verres it was
+prolonged, so that he should hold the office for three years. He
+had gone through the other offices of the State, having been
+Qu&aelig;stor in Asia and &AElig;dile afterward in Rome, to the great
+misfortune of all who were subjected to his handling, as we shall
+learn by-and-by. The facts are mentioned here to show that the
+great offices of the Republic were open to such a man as Verres.
+They were in fact more open to such a candidate than they would be
+to one less iniquitous&mdash;to an honest man or a scrupulous one,
+or to one partially honest, or not altogether unscrupulous. If you
+send a dog into a wood to get truffles, you will endeavor to find
+one that will tear up as many truffles as possible. A proconsular
+robber did not rob only for himself; he robbed more or less for all
+Rome. Verres boasted that with his three years of rule he could
+bring enough home to bribe all the judges, secure all the best
+advocates, and live in splendid opulence for the rest of his life.
+What a dog he was to send into a wood for truffles!</p>
+
+<p>To such a condition as this had Rome fallen when the deputies
+from Sicily came to complain of their late governor, and to obtain
+the services of Cicero in seeking for whatever reparation might be
+possible. Verres had carried on his plunder during the years 73,
+72, 71 <span class="smcap">b.c.</span> During this time Cicero had
+been engaged sedulously as an advocate in Rome. We know the names
+of some of the cases in which he was engaged&mdash;those, for
+instance, for Publius Oppius, who, having been Qu&aelig;stor in
+Bithynia, was accused by his Proconsul of having endeavored to rob
+the soldiers of their dues. We are told that the poor province
+suffered greatly under these two officers, who <span class=
+'pagenum'><a name="Page_127" id="Page_127">127</a></span>were
+always quarrelling as to a division of their plunder. In this case
+the senior officer accused the younger, and the younger, by
+Cicero's aid, was acquitted. Quintilian more than once refers to
+the speech made for Oppius. Cicero also defended Varenus, who was
+charged with having murdered his brother, and one Caius Mustius, of
+whom we only know that he was a farmer of taxes. He was advocate
+also for Sthenius, a Sicilian, who was accused before the Tribunes
+by Verres. We shall hear of Sthenius again among the victims in
+Sicily. The special charge in this case was that, having been
+condemned by Verres as Pr&aelig;tor in Sicily, he had run away to Rome,
+which was illegal. He was, however, acquitted. Of these speeches we
+have only some short fragments, which have been quoted by authors
+whose works have come down to us, such as Quintilian; by which we
+know, at any rate, that Cicero's writings had been so far carefully
+preserved, and that they were commonly read in those days. I will
+translate here the concluding words of a short paper written by M.
+du Rozoir in reference to Cicero's life at this period: "The
+assiduity of our orator at the bar had obtained for him a high
+degree of favor among the people, because they had seen how
+strictly he had observed that Cincian law which forbade advocates
+to take either money or presents for then pleadings&mdash;which
+law, however, the advocates of the day generally did not scruple to
+neglect."<a name="FNanchor_97_97" id="FNanchor_97_97"></a><a href=
+"#Footnote_97_97" class="fnanchor">97</a> It is a good thing to
+be honest when honesty is in vogue; but to be honest when honesty
+is out of fashion is magnificent.</p>
+
+<p>In the affair with Verres, there are two matters to interest the
+reader&mdash;indeed, to instruct the reader&mdash;if the story were
+sufficiently well told. The iniquity of Verres is the
+first&mdash;which is of so extravagant a nature as to become
+farcical by the absurdity of the extent to which he was not afraid
+to go <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_128" id="Page_128">
+128</a></span>in the furtherance of his avarice and lust. As the
+victims suffered two thousand years ago, we can allow ourselves to
+be amused by the inexhaustible fertility of the man's resources and
+the singular iniquity of his schemes. Then we are brought face to
+face with the barefaced corruption of the Roman judges&mdash;a
+corruption which, however, became a regular trade, if not ennobled,
+made, at any rate, aristocratic by the birth, wealth high names,
+and senatorial rank of the robbers. Sulla, for certain State
+purposes&mdash;which consisted in the maintenance of the
+oligarchy&mdash;had transferred the privileges of sitting on the
+judgment-seat from the Equites, or Knights, to the Senators. From
+among the latter a considerable number&mdash;thirty, perhaps, or
+forty, or even fifty&mdash;were appointed to sit with the Pr&aelig;tor
+to hear criminal cases of importance, and by their votes, which
+were recorded on tablets, the accused person was acquitted or
+condemned. To be acquitted by the most profuse corruption entailed
+no disgrace on him who was tried, and often but little on the
+judges who tried him. In Cicero's time the practice, with all its
+chances, had come to be well understood. The Provincial Governors,
+with their Qu&aelig;stors and lieutenants, were chosen from the high
+aristocracy, which also supplied the judges. The judges themselves
+had been employed, or hoped to be employed, in similar lucrative
+service. The leading advocates belonged to the same class. If the
+proconsular thief, when he had made his bag, would divide the spoil
+with some semblance of equity among his brethren, nothing could be
+more convenient. The provinces were so large, and the Greek spirit
+of commercial enterprise which prevailed in them so lively, that
+there was room for plunder ample, at any rate, for a generation or
+two. The Republic boasted that, in its love of pure justice, it had
+provided by certain laws for the protection of its allied subjects
+against any possible faults of administration on the part of its
+own officers. If any injury were done to a province, or a city, or
+even to an individual, the province, or city, or individual could
+bring its grievance to the ivory chair <span class='pagenum'><a
+name="Page_129" id="Page_129">129</a></span>of the Pr&aelig;tor in
+Rome and demand redress; and there had been cases not a few in
+which a delinquent officer had been condemned to banishment. Much,
+indeed, was necessary before the scheme as it was found to exist by
+Verres could work itself into perfection. Verres felt that in his
+time everything had been done for security as well as splendor. He
+would have all the great officers of State on his side. The
+Sicilians, if he could manage the case as he thought it might be
+managed, would not have a leg to stand upon. There was many a trick
+within his power before they could succeed in making good even
+their standing before the Pr&aelig;tor. It was in this condition of
+things that Cicero bethought himself that he might at one blow
+break through the corruption of the judgment-seat, and this he
+determined to do by subjecting the judges to the light of public
+opinion. If Verres could be tried under a bushel, as it were, in
+the dark, as many others had been tried, so that little or nothing
+should be said about the trial in the city at large, then there
+would be no danger for the judges. It could only be by shaming
+them, by making them understand that Rome would become too hot to
+hold them, that they could be brought to give a verdict against the
+accused. This it was that Cicero determined to effect, and did
+effect. And we see throughout the whole pleadings that he was
+concerned in the matter not only for the Sicilians, or against
+Verres. Could something be done for the sake of Rome, for the sake
+of the Republic, to redeem the courts of justice from the obloquy
+which was attached to them? Might it be possible for a man so to
+address himself not only to the judgment-seat, but to all Rome, as
+to do away with this iniquity once and forever? Could he so fill
+the minds of the citizens generally with horror at such proceedings
+as to make them earnest in demanding reform? Hortensius, the great
+advocate of the day, was not only engaged on behalf of Verres, but
+he was already chosen as Consul for the next year. Metellus, who
+was elected Pr&aelig;tor for the next year, was hot in <span class=
+'pagenum'><a name="Page_130" id="Page_130">
+130</a></span>defence of Verres. Indeed, there were three
+Metelluses among the friends of the accused, who had also on his
+side the Scipio of the day. The aristocracy of Rome was altogether
+on the side of Verres, as was natural. But if Cicero might succeed
+at all in this which he meditated, the very greatness of his
+opponents would help him. When it was known that he was to be
+pitted against Hortensius as an advocate, and that he intended to
+defy Hortensius as the coming Consul, then surely Rome would be
+awake to the occasion; and if Rome could be made to awake herself,
+then would this beautiful scheme of wealth from provincial plunder
+be brought to an end.</p>
+
+<p>I will first speak of the work of the judges, and of the
+attempts made to hinder Cicero in the business he had undertaken.
+Then I will endeavor to tell something of the story of Verres and
+his doings. The subject divides itself naturally in this way. There
+are extant seven so-called orations about Verres, of which the two
+first apply to the manner in which the case should be brought
+before the courts. These two were really spoken, and were so
+effective that Verres&mdash;or probably Hortensius, on his
+behalf&mdash;was frightened into silence. Verres pleaded guilty, as
+we should say, which, in accordance with the usages of the court,
+he was enabled to do by retiring and going into voluntary
+banishment. This he did, sooner than stand his ground and listen to
+the narration of his iniquities as it would be given by Cicero in
+the full speech&mdash;the "perpetua oratio"&mdash;which would
+follow the examination of the witnesses. What the orator said
+before the examination of the witnesses was very short. He had to
+husband his time, as it was a part of the grand scheme of
+Hortensius to get adjournment after adjournment because of certain
+sacred rites and games, during the celebration of which the courts
+could not sit. All this was arranged for in the scheme; but Cicero,
+in order that he might baffle the schemers, got through his
+preliminary work as quickly as possible, saying all that he had to
+say about the manner of the trial, about the judges, about the
+scheme, but dilating <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_131" id=
+"Page_131">131</a></span>very little on the iniquities of the
+criminal. But having thus succeeded, having gained his cause in a
+great measure by the unexpected quickness of his operations, then
+he told his story. Then was made that "perpetua oratio" by which we
+have learned the extent to which a Roman governor could go on
+desolating a people who were intrusted to his protection. This full
+narration is divided into five parts, each devoted to a separate
+class of iniquity. These were never spoken, though they appear in
+the form of speeches. They would have been spoken, if required, in
+answer to the defence made by Hortensius on behalf of Verres after
+the hearing of the evidence. But the defence broke down altogether,
+in the fashion thus described by Cicero himself. "In that one hour
+in which I spoke"&mdash;this was the speech which we designate as
+the Actio Prima contra Verrem, the first pleading made against
+Verres, to which we shall come just now&mdash;"I took away all hope
+of bribing the judges from the accused&mdash;from this
+brazen-faced, rich, dissolute, and abandoned man. On the first day
+of the trial, on the mere calling of the names of the witnesses,
+the people of Rome were able to perceive that if this criminal were
+absolved, then there could be no chance for the Republic. On the
+second day his friends and advocates had not only lost all hope of
+gaining their cause, but all relish for going on with it. The third
+day so paralyzed the man himself that he had to bethink himself not
+what sort of reply he could make, but how he could escape the
+necessity of replying by pretending to be ill."<a name=
+"FNanchor_98_98" id="FNanchor_98_98"></a><a href="#Footnote_98_98"
+class="fnanchor">98</a> It was in this way that the trial was
+brought to an end.</p>
+
+<p>But we must go back to the beginning. When an accusation was to
+be made against some great Roman of the day on account of illegal
+public misdoings, as was to be made now against Verres, the conduct
+of the case, which would require probably great labor and expense,
+and would give scope for the display of oratorical excellence, was
+regarded as a task in <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_132" id=
+"Page_132">132</a></span>which a young aspirant to public
+favor might obtain honor and by which he might make himself known
+to the people. It had, therefore, come to pass that there might be
+two or more accusers anxious to undertake the work, and to show
+themselves off as solicitous on behalf of injured innocence, or
+desirous of laboring in the service of the Republic. When this was
+the case, a court of judges was called upon to decide whether this
+man or that other was most fit to perform the work in hand. Such a
+trial was called "Divinatio," because the judges had to get their
+lights in the matter as best they could without the assistance of
+witnesses&mdash;by some process of divination&mdash;with the aid of
+the gods, as it might be. Cicero's first speech in the matter of
+Verres is called In Quintum C&aelig;cilium Divinatio, because one
+C&aelig;cilius came forward to take the case away from him. Here
+was a part of the scheme laid by Hortensius. To deal with Cicero in
+such a matter would no doubt be awkward. His purpose, his
+diligence, his skill, his eloquence, his honesty were known. There
+must be a trial. So much was acknowledged; but if the conduct of it
+could be relegated to a man who was dishonest, or who had no skill,
+no fitness, no special desire for success, then the little scheme
+could be carried through in that way. So C&aelig;cilius was put
+forward as Cicero's competitor, and our first speech is that made
+by Cicero to prove his own superiority to that of his rival.</p>
+
+<p>Whether C&aelig;cilius was or was not hired to break down in his
+assumed duty as accuser, we do not know. The biographers have
+agreed to say that such was the case,<a name="FNanchor_99_99" id=
+"FNanchor_99_99"></a><a href="#Footnote_99_99" class=
+"fnanchor">99</a> grounding their assertion, no doubt, on extreme
+probability. But I doubt whether there is any evidence as to this.
+Cicero himself brings this accusation, but not in that direct
+manner which he would have used had he been able to prove it. The
+Sicilians, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_133" id=
+"Page_133">133</a></span>at any rate, said that it was so. As
+to the incompetency of the man, there was probably no doubt, and it
+might be quite as serviceable to have an incompetent as a dishonest
+accuser. C&aelig;cilius himself had declared that no one could be
+so fit as himself for the work. He knew Sicily well, having been
+born there. He had been Qu&aelig;stor there with Verres, and had been
+able to watch the governor's doings. No doubt there was&mdash;or
+had been in more pious days&mdash;a feeling that a Qu&aelig;stor should
+never turn against the Proconsul under whom he had served, and to
+whom he had held the position almost of a son.<a name=
+"FNanchor_100_100" id="FNanchor_100_100"></a><a href=
+"#Footnote_100_100" class="fnanchor">100</a> But there was less
+of that feeling now than heretofore. Verres had quarrelled with his
+Qu&aelig;stor. Oppius was called on to defend himself against the
+Proconsul with whom he had served. No one could know the doings of
+the governor of a province as well as his own Qu&aelig;stor; and,
+therefore, so said C&aelig;cilius, he would be the preferable
+accuser. As to his hatred of the man, there could be no doubt as to
+that. Everybody knew that they had quarrelled. The purpose, no
+doubt, was to give some colorable excuse to the judges for rescuing
+Verres, the great paymaster, from the fangs of Cicero.</p>
+
+<p>Cicero's speech on the occasion&mdash;which, as speeches went in
+those days, was very short&mdash;is a model of sagacity and
+courage. He had to plead his own fitness, the unfitness of his
+adversary, and the wishes in the matter of the Sicilians. This had
+to be done with no halting phrases. It was not simply his object to
+convince a body of honest men that, with the view of getting at the
+truth, he would be the better advocate of the two. We may imagine
+that there was not a judge there, not a Roman present, who was not
+well aware of that before the orator began. It was needed that the
+absurdity of the comparison between them should be declared so
+loudly <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_134" id="Page_134">
+134</a></span>that the judges would not dare to betray the
+Sicilians, and to liberate the accused, by choosing the incompetent
+man. When Cicero rose to speak, there was probably not one of them
+of his own party, not a Consul, a Pr&aelig;tor, an &AElig;dile, or a
+Qu&aelig;stor, not a judge, not a Senator, not a hanger-on about the
+courts, but was anxious that Verres with his plunder should escape.
+Their hope of living upon the wealth of the provinces hung upon it.
+But if he could speak winged words&mdash;words that should fly all
+over Rome, that might fly also among subject nations&mdash;then
+would the judges not dare to carry out this portion of the
+scheme.</p>
+
+<p>"When," he says, "I had served as Qu&aelig;stor in Sicily, and had
+left the province after such a fashion that all the Sicilians had a
+grateful memory of my authority there, though they had older
+friends on whom they relied much, they felt that I might be a
+bulwark to them in their need. These Sicilians, harassed and
+robbed, have now come to me in public bodies, and have implored me
+to undertake their defence. 'The time has come,' they say, 'not
+that I should look after the interest of this or that man, but that
+I should protect the very life and well-being of the whole
+province.' I am inclined by my sense of duty, by the faith which I
+owe them, by my pity for them, by the example of all good Romans
+before me, by the custom of the Republic, by the old constitution,
+to undertake this task, not as pertaining to my own interests, but
+to those of my close friends."<a name="FNanchor_101_101" id=
+"FNanchor_101_101"></a><a href="#Footnote_101_101" class=
+"fnanchor">101</a> That was his own reason for undertaking the
+case. Then he reminds the judges of what the Roman people
+wished&mdash;the people who had felt with dismay the injury
+inflicted upon them by Sulla's withdrawal of all power from the
+Tribunes, and by the putting the whole authority of the bench into
+the hands of the Senators. "The Roman people, much as they have
+been made to suffer, regret nothing of that they have lost so much
+as the strength and majesty of the old <span class='pagenum'><a
+name="Page_135" id="Page_135">135</a></span>judges. It is with
+the desire of having them back that they demand for the Tribunes
+their former power. It is this misconduct of the present judges
+that has caused them to ask for another class of men for the
+judgment-seat. By the fault and to the shame of the judges of
+to-day, the Censor's authority, which has hitherto always been
+regarded as odious and stern, even that is now requested by the
+people."<a name="FNanchor_102_102" id="FNanchor_102_102"></a><a
+href="#Footnote_102_102" class="fnanchor">102</a> Then he goes on
+to show that, if justice is intended, this case will be put into
+the hands of him whom the Sicilians have themselves chosen. Had the
+Sicilians said that they were unwilling to trust their affairs to
+C&aelig;cilius because they had not known him, but were willing to
+trust him, Cicero, whom they did know, would not even that have
+been reasonable enough of itself? But the Sicilians had known both
+of them, had known C&aelig;cilius almost as well as Cicero, and had
+expressed themselves clearly. Much as they desired to have Cicero,
+they were as anxious not to have C&aelig;cilius. Even had they held
+their tongues about this, everybody would have known it; but they
+had been far from holding their tongues. "Yet you offer yourself to
+these most unwilling clients," he says, turning to C&aelig;cilius.
+"Yet you are ready to plead in a cause that does not belong to you!
+Yet you would defend those who would rather have no defender than
+such a one as you!"<a name="FNanchor_103_103" id=
+"FNanchor_103_103"></a><a href="#Footnote_103_103" class=
+"fnanchor">103</a> Then he attacks Hortensius, the advocate for
+Verres. "Let him not think that, if I am to be employed here, the
+judges can be bribed without infinite danger to all concerned. In
+undertaking this cause of the Sicilians, I undertake also the cause
+of the people of Rome at large. It is not only that one wretched
+sinner should be crushed, which is what the Sicilians want, but
+that this terrible injustice should be stopped altogether, in
+compliance with the wishes of the people."<a name=
+"FNanchor_104_104" id="FNanchor_104_104"></a><a href=
+"#Footnote_104_104" class="fnanchor">104</a> When we remember how
+this was spoken, in the presence of those very judges, in the
+presence of Hortensius himself, in reliance only on the public
+opinion which he was to <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_136"
+id="Page_136">136</a></span>create by his own words, we cannot
+but acknowledge that it is very fine.</p>
+
+<p>After that he again turns upon C&aelig;cilius. "Learn from me,"
+he says, "how many things are expected from him who undertakes the
+accusation of another. If there be one of those qualities in you, I
+will give up to you all that you ask."<a name="FNanchor_105_105"
+id="FNanchor_105_105"></a><a href="#Footnote_105_105" class=
+"fnanchor">105</a> C&aelig;cilius was probably even now in
+alliance with Verres. He himself, when Qu&aelig;stor, had robbed the
+people in the collection of the corn dues, and was unable therefore
+to include that matter in his accusation. "You can bring no charge
+against him on this head, lest it be seen that you were a partner
+with him in the business."<a name="FNanchor_106_106" id=
+"FNanchor_106_106"></a><a href="#Footnote_106_106" class=
+"fnanchor">106</a> He ridicules him as to his personal
+insufficiency. "What, C&aelig;cilius! as to those practices of the
+profession without which an action such as this cannot be carried
+on, do you think that there is nothing in them? Need there be no
+skill in the business, no habit of speaking, no familiarity with
+the Forum, with the judgment-seats, and the laws?"<a name=
+"FNanchor_107_107" id="FNanchor_107_107"></a><a href=
+"#Footnote_107_107" class="fnanchor">107</a> "I know well how
+difficult the ground is. Let me advise you to look into yourself,
+and to see whether you are able to do that kind of thing. Have you
+got voice for it, prudence, memory, wit? Are you able to expose the
+life of Verres, as it must be done, to divide it into parts and
+make everything clear? In doing all this, though nature should have
+assisted you"&mdash;as it has not at all, is of course
+implied&mdash;"if from your earliest childhood you had been imbued
+with letters; if you had learned Greek at Athens instead of at
+Lilyb&aelig;um&mdash;Latin in Rome instead of in Sicily&mdash;still
+would it not be a task beyond your strength to undertake such a
+case, so widely thought of, to complete it by your industry, and
+then to grasp it in your memory; to make it plain by your
+eloquence, and to support it with voice and strength sufficient?
+'Have I these gifts,' you will ask. Would that I had! But from my
+childhood I have done all that I could to attain them."<a name=
+"FNanchor_108_108" id="FNanchor_108_108"></a><a href=
+"#Footnote_108_108" class="fnanchor">108</a></p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_137" id="Page_137">
+137</a></span>Cicero makes his points so well that I would fain go
+through the whole speech, were it not that a similar reason might
+induce me to give abridgments of all his speeches. It may not be
+that the readers of these orations will always sympathize with the
+orator in the matter which he has in hand&mdash;though his power
+over words is so great as to carry the reader with him very
+generally, even at this distance of time&mdash;but the neatness
+with which the weapon is used, the effectiveness of the thrust for
+the purpose intended, the certainty with which the nail is hit on
+the head&mdash;never with an expenditure of unnecessary force, but
+always with the exact strength wanted for the purpose&mdash;these
+are the characteristics of Cicero's speeches which carry the reader
+on with a delight which he will want to share with others, as a man
+when he has heard a good story instantly wishes to tell it again.
+And with Cicero we are charmed by the modernness, by the tone of
+to-day, which his language takes. The rapid way in which he runs
+from scorn to pity, from pity to anger, from anger to public zeal,
+and then instantly to irony and ridicule, implies a lightness of
+touch which, not unreasonably, surprises us as having endured for
+so many hundred years. That poetry should remain to us, even lines
+so vapid as some of those in which Ovid sung of love, seems to be
+more natural, because verses, though they be light, must have been
+labored. But these words spoken by Cicero seem almost to ring in
+our ears as having come to us direct from a man's lips. We see the
+anger gathering on the brow of Hortensius, followed by a look of
+acknowledged defeat. We see the startled attention of the judges as
+they began to feel that in this case they must depart from their
+intended purpose. We can understand how C&aelig;cilius cowered, and
+found consolation in being relieved from his task. We can fancy how
+Verres suffered&mdash;Verres whom no shame could have
+touched&mdash;when all his bribes were becoming inefficient under
+the hands of the orator.</p>
+
+<p>Cicero was chosen for the task, and then the real work began.
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_138" id="Page_138">
+138</a></span>The work as he did it was certainly beyond the
+strength of any ordinary advocate. It was necessary that he should
+proceed to Sicily to obtain the evidence which was to be collected
+over the whole island. He must rate up, too, all the previous
+details of the life of this robber. He must be thoroughly prepared
+to meet the schemers on every point. He asked for a hundred and ten
+days for the purpose of getting up his case, but he took only
+fifty. We must imagine that, as he became more thoroughly versed in
+the intrigues of his adversaries, new lights came upon him. Were he
+to use the whole time allotted to him, or even half the time, and
+then make such an exposition of the criminal as he would delight to
+do were he to indulge himself with that "perpetua oratio" of which
+we hear, then the trial would be protracted till the coming of
+certain public games, during which the courts would not sit. There
+seem to have been three sets of games in his way&mdash;a special
+set for this year, to be given by Pompey, which were to last
+fifteen days; then the Ludi Romani, which were continued for nine
+days. Soon after that would come the games in honor of
+Victory&mdash;so soon that an adjournment over them would be
+obtained as a matter of course. In this way the trial would be
+thrown over into the next year, when Hortensius and one Metellus
+would be Consuls, and another Metellus would be the Pr&aelig;tor,
+controlling the judgment-seats. Glabrio was the Pr&aelig;tor for this
+present year. In Glabrio Cicero could put some trust. With
+Hortensius and the two Metelluses in power, Verres would be as good
+as acquitted. Cicero, therefore, had to be on the alert, so that in
+this unexpected way, by sacrificing his own grand opportunity for a
+speech, he might conquer the schemers. We hear how he went to
+Sicily in a little boat from an unknown port, so as to escape the
+dangers contrived for him by the friends of Verres.<a name=
+"FNanchor_109_109" id="FNanchor_109_109"></a><a href=
+"#Footnote_109_109" class="fnanchor">109</a> <span class=
+'pagenum'><a name="Page_139" id="Page_139">139</a></span>If it
+could be arranged that the clever advocate should be kidnapped by a
+pirate, what a pleasant way would that be of putting an end to
+these abominable reforms! Let them get rid of Cicero, if only for a
+time, and the plunder might still be divided. Against all this he
+had to provide. When in Sicily he travelled sometimes on foot, for
+the sake of caution&mdash;never with the retinue to which he was
+entitled as a Roman senator. As a Roman senator he might have
+demanded free entertainment at any town he entered, at great cost
+to the town. But from all this he abstained, and hurried back to
+Rome with his evidence so quickly that he was able to produce it
+before the judges, so as to save the adjournments which he
+feared.</p>
+
+<p>Verres retired from the trial, pleading guilty, after hearing
+the evidence. Of the witnesses and of the manner in which they told
+the story, we have no account. The second speech which we
+have&mdash;the Divinatio, or speech against C&aelig;cilius, having
+been the first&mdash;is called the Actio Prima contra
+Verrem&mdash;"the first process against Verres." This is almost
+entirely confined to an exhortation to the judges. Cicero had made
+up his mind to make no speech about Verres till after the trial
+should be over. There would not be the requisite time. The evidence
+he must bring forward. And he would so appall these corrupt judges
+that they should not dare to acquit the accused. This Actio Prima
+contains the words in which he did appall the judges. As we read
+them, we pity the judges. There were fourteen, whose names we know.
+That there may have been many more is probable. There was the
+Pr&aelig;tor Urbanus of the day, Glabrio. With him were Metellus, one of
+the Pr&aelig;tors for the next year, and C&aelig;sonius, who, with Cicero
+himself, was &AElig;dile designate. There were three Tribunes of <span
+class='pagenum'><a name="Page_140" id="Page_140">
+140</a></span>the people and two military Tribunes. There was a
+Servilius, a Catulus, a Marcellus. Whom among these he suspected we
+can hardly say. Certainly he suspected Metellus. To Servilius<a
+name="FNanchor_110_110" id="FNanchor_110_110"></a><a href=
+"#Footnote_110_110" class="fnanchor">110</a> he paid an ornate
+compliment in one of the written orations published after the trial
+was over, from whence we may suppose that he was well inclined
+toward him. Of Glabrio he spoke well. The body, as a body, was of
+such a nature that he found it necessary to appall them. It is thus
+that he begins: "Not by human wisdom, O ye judges, but by chance,
+and by the aid, as it were, of the gods themselves, an event has
+come to pass by which the hatred now felt for your order, and the
+infamy attached to the judgment seat, may be appeased; for an
+opinion has gone abroad, disgraceful to the Republic, full of
+danger to yourselves&mdash;which is in the mouths of all men not
+only here in Rome but through all nations&mdash;that by these
+courts as they are now constituted, a man, if he be only rich
+enough, will never be condemned, though he be ever so guilty." What
+an exordium with which to begin a forensic pleading before a bench
+of judges composed of Pr&aelig;tors, &AElig;diles, and coming Consuls! And
+this at a time, too, when men's minds were still full of Sulla's
+power; when some were thinking that they too might be Sullas; while
+the idea was still strong that a few nobles ought to rule the Roman
+Empire for their own advantage and their own luxury! What words to
+address to a Metellus, a Catulus, and a Marcellus! I have brought
+before you such a wretch, he goes on to say, that by a just
+judgment upon him you can recover your favor with the people of
+Rome, and your credit with other nations. "This is a trial in which
+you, indeed, will have to judge this man who is accused, but in
+which also the Roman people will have to judge you. By what is done
+to him will be determined whether a man who is guilty, and at the
+same time rich, can possibly be condemned in Rome.<a name=
+"FNanchor_111_111" id="FNanchor_111_111"></a><a href=
+"#Footnote_111_111" class="fnanchor">111</a>If the matter goes
+amiss here, all men will declare, <span class='pagenum'><a name=
+"Page_141" id="Page_141">141</a></span>not that better men
+should be selected out of your order, which would be impossible,
+but that another order of citizens must be named from which to
+select the judges."<a name="FNanchor_112_112" id=
+"FNanchor_112_112"></a><a href="#Footnote_112_112" class=
+"fnanchor">112</a> This short speech was made. The witnesses were
+examined during nine days; then Hortensius, with hardly a struggle
+at a reply, gave way, and Verres stood condemned by his own
+verdict.</p>
+
+<p>When the trial was over, and Verres had consented to go into
+exile, and to pay whatever fine was demanded, the "perpetua oratio"
+which Cicero thought good to make on the matter was published to
+the world. It is written as though it was to have been spoken, with
+counterfeit tricks of oratory&mdash;with some tricks so well done
+in the first part of it as to have made one think that, when these
+special words were prepared, he must have intended to speak them.
+It has been agreed, however, that such was not the case. It
+consists of a narration of the villainies of Verres, and is divided
+into what have been called five different speeches, to which the
+following appellations are given: De Pr&aelig;tura Urbana, in which we
+are told what Verres did when he was city Pr&aelig;tor, and very many
+things also which he did before he came to that office, De
+Jurisdictione Siciliensi, in which is described his conduct as a
+Roman magistrate on the island; De Re Frumentaria, setting forth
+the abomination of his exactions in regard to the corn tax; De
+Signis, detailing the robberies he perpetuated in regard to statues
+and other ornaments; and De Suppliciis, giving an account of the
+murders he committed and the tortures he inflicted. A question is
+sometimes mooted in conversation whether or no the general
+happiness of the world has been improved by increasing civilization
+When the reader finds from these stories, as told by a leading
+Roman of the day, how men were treated under the Roman
+oligarchy&mdash;not only Greek allies but Romans also&mdash;I think
+he will be inclined to answer the question in favour of
+civilization.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_142" id="Page_142">
+142</a></span>I can only give a few of the many little histories
+which have been preserved for us in this Actio Secunda; but perhaps
+these few may suffice to show how a great Roman officer could
+demean himself in his government. Of the doings of Verres before he
+went to Sicily I will select two. It became his duty on one
+occasion&mdash;a job which he seems to have sought for purpose of
+rapine&mdash;to go to Lampsacus, a town in Asia, as lieutenant, or
+legate, for Dolabella, who then had command in Asia. Lampsacus was
+on the Hellespont, an allied town of specially good repute. Here he
+is put up as a guest, with all the honors of a Roman officer, at
+the house of a citizen named Janitor. But he heard that another
+citizen, one Philodamus, had a beautiful daughter&mdash;an article
+with which we must suppose that Janitor was not equally well
+supplied. Verres, determined to get at the lady, orders that his
+creature Rubrius shall be quartered at the house of Philodamus.
+Philodamus, who from his rank was entitled to be burdened only with
+the presence of leading Romans, grumbles at this; but, having
+grumbled, consents, and having consented, does the best to make his
+house comfortable. He gives a great supper, at which the Romans eat
+and drink, and purposely create a tumult. Verres, we understand,
+was not there. The intention is that the girl shall be carried away
+and brought to him. In the middle of their cups the father is
+desired to produce his daughter; but this he refuses to do. Rubrius
+then orders the doors to be closed, and proceeds to ransack the
+house. Philodamus, who will not stand this, fetches his son, and
+calls his fellow-citizens around him. Rubrius succeeds in pouring
+boiling water over his host, but in the row the Romans get the
+worst of it. At last one of Verres's lictors&mdash;absolutely a
+Roman lictor&mdash;is killed, and the woman is not carried off. The
+man at least bore the outward signs of a lictor, but, according to
+Cicero, was in the pay of Verres as his pimp.</p>
+
+<p>So far Verres fails; and the reader, rejoicing at the courage of
+the father who could protect his own house even against <span
+class='pagenum'><a name="Page_143" id="Page_143">
+143</a></span>Romans, begins to feel some surprise that this case
+should have been selected. So far the lieutenant had not done the
+mischief he had intended, but he soon avenges his failure. He
+induces Dolabella, his chief, to have Philodamus and his son
+carried off to Laodicea, and there tried before Nero, the then
+Proconsul, for killing the sham lictor. They are tried at Laodicea
+before Nero, Verres himself sitting as one of the judges, and are
+condemned. Then in the market place of the town, in the presence of
+each other, the father and son are beheaded&mdash;a thing, as
+Cicero says, very sad for all Asia to behold. All this had been
+done some years ago; and, nevertheless, Verres had been chosen
+Pr&aelig;tor, and sent to Sicily to govern the Sicilians.</p>
+
+<p>When Verres was Pr&aelig;tor at Rome&mdash;the year before he was
+sent to Sicily&mdash;it became his duty, or rather privilege, as he
+found it, to see that a certain temple of Castor in the city was
+given up in proper condition by the executors of a defunct citizen
+who had taken a contract for keeping it in repair. This man, whose
+name had been Junius, left a son, who was a Junius also under age,
+with a large fortune in charge of various trustees, tutors, as they
+were called, whose duty it was to protect the heir's interests.
+Verres, knowing of old that no property was so easily preyed on as
+that of a minor, sees at once that something may be done with the
+temple of Castor. The heir took oath, and to the extent of his
+property he was bound to keep the edifice in good repair. But
+Verres, when he made an inspection, finds everything to be in more
+than usually good order. There is not a scratch on the roof of
+which he can make use. Nothing has been allowed to go astray. Then
+"one of his dogs"&mdash;for he had boasted to his friend Ligur that
+he always went about with dogs to search out his game for
+him&mdash;suggested that some of the columns were out of the
+perpendicular. Verres does not know what this means; but the dog
+explains. All columns are, in fact, by strict measurement, more or
+less out of the perpendicular, as we are told that all eyes squint
+a little, though we do not see that they squint. <span class=
+'pagenum'><a name="Page_144" id="Page_144">144</a></span>But
+as columns ought to be perpendicular, here was a matter on which he
+might go to work. He does go to work. The trustees knowing their
+man&mdash;knowing also that in the present condition of Rome it was
+impossible to escape from an unjust Pr&aelig;tor without paying
+largely&mdash;went to his mistress and endeavored to settle the
+matter with her. Here we have an amusing picture of the way in
+which the affairs of the city were carried on in that lady's
+establishment; how she had her levee, took her bribes, and drove a
+lucrative trade. Doing, however, no good with her, the trustees
+settled with an agent to pay Verres two hundred thousand sesterces
+to drop the affair. This was something under &pound;2000. But
+Verres repudiated the arrangement with scorn. He could do much
+better than that with such a temple and such a minor. He puts the
+repairs up to auction; and refusing a bid from the trustees
+themselves&mdash;the very persons who are the most interested in
+getting the work done, if there were work to do&mdash;has it
+knocked down to himself for five hundred and sixty thousand
+sesterces, or about &pound;5000.<a name="FNanchor_113_113" id=
+"FNanchor_113_113"></a><a href="#Footnote_113_113" class=
+"fnanchor">113</a> Then we are told how he had the pretended work
+done by the putting up of a rough crane. No real work is done, no
+new stones are brought, no money is spent. That is the way in which
+Verres filled his office as Pr&aelig;tor Urbanus; but it does not seem
+that any public notice is taken of his iniquities as long as he
+confined himself to little jobs such as this.</p>
+
+<p>Then we come to the affairs of Sicily&mdash;and the long list of
+robberies is commenced by which that province was made desolate. It
+seems that nothing gave so grand a scope to the greed of a public
+functionary who was at the same time governor and judge as disputed
+wills. It was not necessary that any of the persons concerned
+should dispute the will among <span class='pagenum'><a name=
+"Page_145" id="Page_145">145</a></span>them. Given the facts
+that a man had died and left property behind him, then Verres would
+find means to drag the heir into court, and either frighten him
+into payment of a bribe or else rob him of his inheritance. Before
+he left Rome for the province he heard that a large fortune had
+been left to one Dio on condition that he should put up certain
+statues in the market-place.<a name="FNanchor_114_114" id=
+"FNanchor_114_114"></a><a href="#Footnote_114_114" class=
+"fnanchor">114</a> It was not uncommon for a man to desire the
+reputation of adorning his own city, but to choose that the expense
+should be borne by his heir rather than by himself. Failing to put
+up the statues, the heir was required to pay a fine to Venus
+Erycina&mdash;to enrich, that is, the worship of that goddess, who
+had a favorite temple under Mount Eryx. The statues had been duly
+erected. But, nevertheless, here there was an opening. So Verres
+goes to work, and in the name of Venus brings an action against
+Dio. The verdict is given, not in favor of Venus but in favor of
+Verres.</p>
+
+<p>This manner of paying honor to the gods, and especially to
+Venus, was common in Sicily. Two sons<a name="FNanchor_115_115" id=
+"FNanchor_115_115"></a><a href="#Footnote_115_115" class=
+"fnanchor">115</a> received a fortune from their father, with a
+condition that, if some special thing were not done, a fine should
+be paid to Venus. The man had been dead twenty years ago. But "the
+dogs" which the Pr&aelig;tor kept were very sharp, and, distant as was
+the time, found out the clause. Action is taken against the two
+sons, who indeed gain their case; but they gain it by a bribe so
+enormous that they are ruined men. There was one Heraclius,<a name=
+"FNanchor_116_116" id="FNanchor_116_116"></a><a href=
+"#Footnote_116_116" class="fnanchor">116</a> the son of Hiero, a
+nobleman of Syracuse, who received a legacy amounting to 3,000,000
+sesterces&mdash;we will say &pound;24,000&mdash;from a relative,
+also a Heraclius. He had, too, a house full of handsome silver
+plate, silk and hangings, and valuable slaves. A man, "Dives equom,
+dives pictai vestis et auri." Verres heard, of course. He had by
+this time taken some Sicilian dogs into his service, men of
+Syracuse, and had learned from <span class='pagenum'><a name=
+"Page_146" id="Page_146">146</a></span>them that there was a
+clause in the will of the elder Heraclius that certain statues
+should be put up in the gymnasium of the city. They undertake to
+bring forward servants of the gymnasium who should say that the
+statues were never properly erected. Cicero tells us how Verres
+went to work, now in this court, now in that, breaking all the laws
+as to Sicilian jurisdiction, but still proceeding under the
+pretence of law, till he got everything out of the wretch&mdash;not
+only all the legacies from Heraclius, but every shilling, and every
+article left to the man by his father. There is a pretence of
+giving some of the money to the town of Syracuse; but for himself
+he takes all the valuables, the Corinthian vases, the purple
+hangings, what slaves he chooses. Then everything else is sold by
+auction. How he divided the spoil with the Syracusans, and then
+quarrelled with them, and how he lied as to the share taken by
+himself, will all be found in Cicero's narrative. Heraclius was of
+course ruined. For the stories of Epicrates and Sopater I must
+refer the reader to the oration. In that of Sopater there is the
+peculiarity that Verres managed to get paid by everybody all
+round.</p>
+
+<p>The story of Sthenius is so interesting that I cannot pass it
+by. Sthenius was a man of wealth and high standing, living at
+Therma in Sicily, with whom Verres often took up his abode; for, as
+governor, he travelled much about the island, always in pursuit of
+plunder. Sthenius had had his house full of beautiful things. Of
+all these Verres possessed himself&mdash;some by begging, some by
+demanding, and some by absolute robbery. Sthenius, grieved as he
+was to find himself pillaged, bore all this. The man was Roman
+Pr&aelig;tor, and injuries such as these had to be endured. At Therma,
+however, in the public place of the city, there were some beautiful
+statues. For these Verres longed, and desired his host to get them
+for him. Sthenius declared that this was impossible. The statues
+had, under peculiar circumstances, been recovered by Scipio
+Africanus from Carthage, and been restored by the Roman General
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_147" id="Page_147">
+147</a></span>to the Sicilians, from whom they had been taken, and
+had been erected at Therma. There was a peculiarly beautiful figure
+of Stesichorus, the poet, as an old man bent double, with a book in
+his hand&mdash;a very glorious work of art; and there was a
+goat&mdash;in bronze probably&mdash;as to which Cicero is at the
+pains of telling us that even he, unskilled as he was in such
+matters, could see its charms. No one had sharper eyes for such
+pretty ornaments than Cicero, or a more decided taste for them. But
+as Hortensius, his rival and opponent in this case, had taken a
+marble sphinx from Verres, he thought it expedient to show how
+superior he was to such matters. There was probably something of
+joke in this, as his predilections would no doubt be known to those
+he was addressing.<a name="FNanchor_117_117" id=
+"FNanchor_117_117"></a><a href="#Footnote_117_117" class=
+"fnanchor">117</a></p>
+
+<p>In the matter Sthenius was incorruptible, and not even the
+Pr&aelig;tor could carry them away without his aid. Cicero, who is very
+warm in praise of Sthenius, declares that "here at last Verres had
+found one town, the only one in the world, from which he was unable
+to carry away something of the public property by force, or
+stealth, or open command, or favor."<a name="FNanchor_118_118" id=
+"FNanchor_118_118"></a><a href="#Footnote_118_118" class=
+"fnanchor">118</a> The governor was so disgusted with this that
+he abandoned Sthenius, leaving the house which he had plundered of
+everything, and betook himself to that of one Agathinus, who had a
+beautiful daughter, Callidama, who, with her husband, Dorotheus,
+lived with her father They were enemies of Sthenius, and we are
+given to understand that Verres ingratiated himself with them
+partly for the sake of Callidama, who seems very quickly to have
+been given up to him,<a name="FNanchor_119_119" id=
+"FNanchor_119_119"></a><a href="#Footnote_119_119" class=
+"fnanchor">119</a> and partly that he might instigate them to
+bring actions against Sthenius. This is done with great success; so
+that Sthenius is forced to run away, and betake himself, winter as
+it was, across the seas to Rome. It has already been told that when
+he was at Rome <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_148" id=
+"Page_148">148</a></span>an action was brought against him by
+Verres for having run away when he was under judgment, in which
+Cicero defended him, and in which he was acquitted. In the teeth of
+his acquittal, Verres persecuted the man by every form of law which
+came to his hands as Pr&aelig;tor, but always in opposition to the law.
+There is an audacity about the man's proceedings, in his open
+contempt of the laws which it was his special duty to carry out,
+making us feel how confident he was that he could carry everything
+before him in Rome by means of his money. By robbery and concealing
+his robberies, by selling his judgments in such a way that he
+should maintain some reticence by ordinary precaution, he might
+have made much money, as other governors had done. But he resolved
+that it would pay him better to rob everywhere openly, and then,
+when the day of reckoning came, to buy the judges wholesale. As to
+shame at such doings, there was no such feelings left among
+Romans.</p>
+
+<p>Before he comes to the story of Sthenius, Cicero makes a grandly
+ironical appeal to the bench before him: "Yes, O judges, keep this
+man; keep him in the State! Spare him, preserve him so that he,
+too, may sit with us as a judge here so that he, too, may, with
+impartiality, advise us, as a Senator, what may be best for us as
+to peace and war! Not that we need trouble ourselves as to his
+senatorial duties. His authority would be nothing. When would he
+dare, or when would he care, to come among us? Unless it might be
+in the idle month of February, when would a man so idle, so
+debauched, show himself in the Senate-house? Let him come and show
+himself. Let him advise us to attack the Cretans; to pronounce the
+Greeks of Byzantium free; to declare Ptolemy King.<a name=
+"FNanchor_120_120" id="FNanchor_120_120"></a><a href=
+"#Footnote_120_120" class="fnanchor">120</a> Let him speak and
+vote as Hortensius may direct. This will have but little effect
+upon our lives or our property. But beyond <span class='pagenum'><a
+name="Page_149" id="Page_149">149</a></span>this there is
+something we must look to; something that would be distrusted;
+something that every good man has to fear! If by chance this man
+should escape out of our hands, he would have to sit there upon
+that bench and be a judge. He would be called upon to pronounce on
+the lives of a Roman citizen. He would be the right-hand officer in
+the army of this man here,<a name="FNanchor_121_121" id=
+"FNanchor_121_121"></a><a href="#Footnote_121_121" class=
+"fnanchor">121</a> of this man who is striving to be the lord and
+ruler of our judgment-seats. The people of Rome at least refuse
+this! This at least cannot be endured!"</p>
+
+<p>The third of these narratives tells us how Verres managed in his
+province that provision of corn for the use of Rome, the collection
+of which made the possession of Sicily so important to the Romans.
+He begins with telling his readers&mdash;as he does too
+frequently&mdash;how great and peculiar is the task he has
+undertaken; and he uses an argument of which we cannot but admit
+the truth, though we doubt whether any modern advocate would dare
+to put it forward. We must remember, however, that Romans were not
+accustomed to be shamefaced in praising themselves. What Cicero
+says of himself all others said also of themselves; only Cicero
+could say it better than others. He reminds us that he who accuses
+another of any crime is bound to be especially free from that crime
+himself. "Would you charge any one as a thief? you must be clear
+from any suspicion of even desiring another man's property. Have
+you brought a man up for malice or cruelty? take care that you be
+not found hard-hearted. Have you called a man a seducer or an
+adulterer? be sure that your own life shows no trace of such vices.
+Whatever you would punish in another, that you must avoid yourself.
+A public accuser would be intolerable, or even a caviller, who
+should inveigh against sins for which he himself is called in
+question. But in this <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_150" id=
+"Page_150">150</a></span>man I find all wickednesses combined.
+There is no lust, no iniquity, no shamelessness of which his life
+does not supply with ample evidence." The nature of the difficulty
+to which Cicero is thus subjected is visible enough. As Verres is
+all that is bad, so must he, as accuser, be all that is good; which
+is more, we should say, than any man would choose to declare of
+himself! But he is equal to the occasion. "In regard to this man, O
+judges, I lay down for myself the law as I have stated it. I must
+so live that I must clearly seem to be, and always have been, the
+very opposite of this man, not only in my words and deeds, but as
+to that arrogance and impudence which you see in him." Then he
+shows how opposite he is to Verres at any rate, in impudence! "I am
+not sorry to see," he goes on to say, "that that life which has
+always been the life of my own choosing, has now been made a
+necessity to me by the law which I have laid down for myself."<a
+name="FNanchor_122_122" id="FNanchor_122_122"></a><a href=
+"#Footnote_122_122" class="fnanchor">122</a> Mr. Pecksniff spoke
+of himself in the same way, but no one, I think, believed him.
+Cicero probably was believed. But the most wonderful thing is, that
+his manner of life justified what he said of himself. When others
+of his own order were abandoned to lust, iniquity, and
+shamelessness, he lived in purity, with clean hands, doing good as
+far as was in his power to those around him. A laugh will be raised
+at his expense in regard to that assertion of his that, even in the
+matter of arrogance, his conduct should be the opposite of that of
+Verres. But this will come because I have failed to interpret
+accurately the meaning of those words, "oris oculorumque illa
+contumacia ac superbia quam videtis." Verres, as we can understand,
+had carried himself during the trial with a bragging, brazen, bold
+face, determined to show no shame as to his own doings. It is in
+this, which was a matter of manner and taste, that Cicero declares
+that he will be the man's opposite as well as in conduct. As to the
+ordinary boastings, by which it has to be acknowledged <span class=
+'pagenum'><a name="Page_151" id="Page_151">151</a></span>that
+Cicero sometimes disgusts his readers, it will be impossible for us
+to receive a just idea of his character without remembering that it
+was the custom of a Roman to boast. We wait to have good things
+said of us, or are supposed to wait. The Roman said them of
+himself. The "veni, vidi, vici" was the ordinary mode of expression
+in those times, and in earlier times among the Greeks.<a name=
+"FNanchor_123_123" id="FNanchor_123_123"></a><a href=
+"#Footnote_123_123" class="fnanchor">123</a> This is distasteful
+to us; and it will probably be distasteful to those who come after
+us, two or three hundred years hence, that this or that British
+statesman should have made himself an Earl or a Knight of the
+Garter. Now it is thought by many to be proper enough. It will
+shock men in future days that great peers or rich commoners should
+have bargained for ribbons and lieutenancies and titles. Now it is
+the way of the time. Though virtue and vice may be said to remain
+the same from all time to all time, the latitudes allowed and the
+deviations encouraged in this or the other age must be considered
+before the character of a man can be discovered. The boastings of
+Cicero have been preserved for us. We have to bethink ourselves
+that his words are 2000 years old. There is such a touch of
+humanity in them, such a feeling of latter-day civilization and
+almost of Christianity, that we are apt to condemn what remains in
+them of paganism, as though they were uttered yesterday. When we
+come to the coarseness of his attacks, his descriptions of Piso
+by-and-by, his abuse of Gabinius, and his invectives against
+Antony; when we read his altered opinions, as shown in the period
+of C&aelig;sar's dominion, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_152"
+id="Page_152">152</a></span>his flattery of C&aelig;sar when
+in power, and his exultations when C&aelig;sar has been killed;
+when we find that he could be coarse in his language and a bully,
+and servile&mdash;for it has all to be admitted&mdash;we have to
+reflect under what circumstances, under what surroundings, and for
+what object were used the words which displease us. Speaking before
+the full court at this trial, he dared to say he knew how to live
+as a man and to carry himself as a gentleman. As men and gentlemen
+were then, he was justified.</p>
+
+<p>The description of Verres's rapacity in regard to the corn tax
+is long and complex, and need hardly be followed at length, unless
+by those who desire to know how the iniquity of such a one could
+make the most of an imposition which was in itself very bad, and
+pile up the burden till the poor province was unable to bear it.
+There were three kinds of imposition as to corn. The first, called
+the "decumanum," was simply a tithe.</p>
+
+<p>The producers through the island had to furnish Rome with a
+tenth of their produce, and it was the Pr&aelig;tor's duty, or rather
+that of the Qu&aelig;stor under the Pr&aelig;tor, to see that the tithe was
+collected. How Verres saw to this himself, and how he treated the
+Sicilian husbandmen in regard to the tithe, is so told that we are
+obliged to give the man credit for an infinite fertility of
+resources. Then there is the "emptum," or corn bought for the use
+of Rome, of which there were two kinds. A second tithe had to be
+furnished at a price fixed by the Roman Senate, which price was
+considered to be below that of its real value, and then 800,000
+bushels were purchased, or nominally purchased, at a price which
+was also fixed by the Senate, but which was nearer to the real
+value. Three sesterces a bushel for the first and four for the
+last, were the prices fixed at this time. For making these payments
+vast sums of money were remitted to Verres, of which the accounts
+were so kept that it was hard to say whether any found its way into
+the hands of the farmers who undoubtedly furnished the corn. The
+third corn tax was the "&aelig;stimatum." This consisted of a certain
+fixed quantity <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_153" id=
+"Page_153">153</a></span>which had to be supplied to the
+Pr&aelig;tor for the use of his governmental establishment&mdash;to be
+supplied either in grain or in money. What such a one as Verres
+would do with his, the reader may conceive.</p>
+
+<p>All this was of vital importance to Rome. Sicily and Africa were
+the granaries from which Rome was supplied with its bread. To get
+supplies from a province was necessary. Rich men have servants in
+order that they may live at ease themselves. So it was with the
+Romans to whom the provinces acted as servants. It was necessary to
+have a sharp agent, some Proconsul or Propr&aelig;tor; but when there
+came one so sharp as Verres, all power of recreating supplies would
+for a time be destroyed. Even Cicero boasted that in a time of
+great scarcity, he, being then Qu&aelig;stor in Sicily, had sent
+extraordinary store of corn over to the city.<a name=
+"FNanchor_124_124" id="FNanchor_124_124"></a><a href=
+"#Footnote_124_124" class="fnanchor">124</a> But he had so done
+it as to satisfy all who were concerned.</p>
+
+<p>Verres, in his corn dealings with the Sicilians, had a certain
+friend, companion, and minister&mdash;one of his favorite dogs,
+perhaps we may call him&mdash;named Apronius, whom Cicero specially
+describes. The description I must give, because it is so powerful;
+because it shows us how one man could in those days speak of
+another in open court before all the world; because it affords us
+an instance of the intensity of hatred which the orator could throw
+into his words; but I must hide it in the original language, as I
+could not translate it without offence.<a name="FNanchor_125_125"
+id="FNanchor_125_125"></a><a href="#Footnote_125_125" class=
+"fnanchor">125</a></p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_154" id="Page_154">
+154</a></span>Then we have a book devoted to the special pillage
+of statues and other ornaments, which, for the genius displayed in
+story-telling, is perhaps of all the Verrine orations the most
+amusing. The Greek people had become in a peculiar way devoted to
+what we generally call Art. We are much given to the collecting of
+pictures, china, bronze, and marbles, partly from love of such
+things, partly from pride in ornamenting our houses so as to excite
+the admiration of others, partly from a feeling that money so
+invested is not badly placed with a view to future returns. All
+these feelings operated with the Greeks to a much greater extent.
+Investments in consols and railway shares were not open to them.
+Money they used to lend at usury, no doubt, but with a great chance
+of losing it. The Greek colonists were industrious, were covetous,
+and prudent. From this it had come to pass that, as they made their
+way about the world&mdash;to the cities which they established
+round the Mediterranean&mdash;they collected in their new homes
+great store of ornamental wealth. This was done with much profusion
+at Syracuse, a Greek city in Sicily, and spread from them over the
+whole island. The temples of the gods were filled with the works of
+the great Greek artists, and every man of note had his gallery.
+That Verres, hog as he is described to have been, had a passion for
+these things, is manifest to us. He came to his death at last in
+defence of some favorite images. He had returned to Rome by means
+of C&aelig;sar's amnesty, and Marc Antony had him murdered because
+he would not surrender some treasures of art. When we read the De
+Signis&mdash;About Statues&mdash;we are led to imagine that the
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_155" id="Page_155">
+155</a></span>search after these things was the chief object of
+the man throughout his three years of office&mdash;as we have
+before been made to suppose that all his mind and time had been
+devoted to the cheating of the Sicilians in the matter of corn. But
+though Verres loved these trinkets, it was not altogether for
+himself that he sought them. Only one third of his plunder was for
+himself. Senators, judges, advocates, Consuls, and Pr&aelig;tors could
+be bribed with articles of <i>vertu</i> as well as with money.</p>
+
+<p>There are eleven separate stories told of these robberies. I
+will give very shortly the details of one or two. There was one
+Marcus Heius, a rich citizen of Messana, in whose house Verres took
+great delight. Messana itself was very useful to him, and the
+Mamertines, as the people of Messana were called were his best
+friends in all Sicily: for he made Messana the depot of his
+plunder, and there he caused to be built at the expense of the
+Government an enormous ship called the <i>Cybea</i>,<a name=
+"FNanchor_126_126" id="FNanchor_126_126"></a><a href=
+"#Footnote_126_126" class="fnanchor">126</a> in which his
+treasures were carried out of the island. He therefore specially
+favored Messana, and the district of Messana was supposed to have
+been scourged by him with lighter rods than those used elsewhere in
+Sicily. But this man Heius had a chapel, very sacred, in which were
+preserved four specially beautiful images. There was a Cupid by
+Praxiteles, and a bronze Hercules by Myro, and two Can&oelig;phr&aelig; by
+Polycletus. These were treasures which all the world came to see,
+and which were open to be seen by all the world. These Verres took
+away, and caused accounts to be forged in which it was made to
+appear that he had bought them for trifling sums. It seems that
+some forced assent had been obtained from Heius as to the
+transaction. Now there was a plan in vogue for making things
+pleasant for a Proconsul retiring <span class='pagenum'><a name=
+"Page_156" id="Page_156">156</a></span>from his government, in
+accordance with which a deputation would proceed from the province
+to Rome to declare how well and kindly the Proconsul had behaved in
+his government. The allies, even when they had been, as it were,
+skinned alive by their governor, were constrained to send their
+deputations. Deputations were got up in Sicily from Messana and
+Syracuse, and with the others from Messana came this man Heius.
+Heius did not wish to tell about his statues; but he was asked
+questions, and was forced to answer. Cicero informs us how it all
+took place. "He was a man," he said&mdash;this is what Cicero tells
+us that Heius said&mdash;"who was well esteemed in his own country,
+and would wish you"&mdash;you judges&mdash;"to think well of his
+religious spirit and of his personal dignity. He had come here to
+praise Verres because he had been required to do so by his
+fellow-citizens. He, however, had never kept things for sale in his
+own house; and had he been left to himself, nothing would have
+induced him to part with the sacred images which had been left to
+him by his ancestors as the ornaments of his own chapel.<a name=
+"FNanchor_127_127" id="FNanchor_127_127"></a><a href=
+"#Footnote_127_127" class="fnanchor">127</a> Nevertheless, he had
+come to praise Verres, and would have held his tongue had it been
+possible."</p>
+
+<p>Cicero finishes his catalogue by telling us of the manifold
+robberies committed by Verres in Syracuse, especially from the
+temples of the gods; and he begins his account of the Syracusan
+iniquities by drawing a parallel between two Romans whose names
+were well known in that city: Marcellus, who had besieged it as an
+enemy and taken it, and Verres, who had been sent to govern it in
+peace. Marcellus had saved the lives of the Syracusans; Verres had
+made the Forum to run with their blood. The harbor which had held
+its own against Marcellus, as we may read in our Livy, had been
+wilfully opened by Verres to Cilician pirates. This Syracuse which
+had been so carefully preserved by its Roman conqueror <span class=
+'pagenum'><a name="Page_157" id="Page_157">157</a></span>the
+most beautiful of all the Greek cities on the face of the
+earth&mdash;so beautiful that Marcellus had spared to it all its
+public ornaments&mdash;had been stripped bare by Verres. There was
+the temple of Minerva from which he had taken all the pictures.
+There were doors to this temple of such beauty that books had been
+written about them. He stripped the ivory ornaments from them, and
+the golden balls with which they had been made splendid. He tore
+off from them the head of the Gorgon and carried it away, leaving
+them to be rude doors, Goth that he was!</p>
+
+<p>And he took the Sappho from the Prytaneum, the work of Silanion!
+a thing of such beauty that no other man can have the like of it in
+his own private house; yet Verres has it&mdash;a man hardly fit to
+carry such a work of art as a burden, not possess it as a treasure
+of his own. "What, too!" he says, "have you not stolen P&aelig;an from
+the temple of &AElig;sculapius&mdash;a statue so remarkable for its
+beauty, so well-known for the worship attached to it, that all the
+world has been wont to visit it? What! has not the image of
+Arist&aelig;us been taken by you from the temple of Bacchus? Have you
+not even stolen the statue of Jupiter Imperator, so sacred in the
+eyes of all men&mdash;that Jupiter which the Greeks call Ourios?
+You have not hesitated to rob the temple of Proserpine of the
+lovely head in Parian marble."<a name="FNanchor_128_128" id=
+"FNanchor_128_128"></a><a href="#Footnote_128_128" class=
+"fnanchor">128</a> Then Cicero speaks of the worship due to all
+these gods as though he himself believed in their godhead. As he
+had begun this chapter with the Mamertines of Messana, so he ends
+it with an address to them. "It is well that you should come, you
+alone out of all the provinces, and praise Verres here in Rome. But
+what can you say for him? Was it not your duty to have built a ship
+for the Republic? You have built none such, but have constructed a
+huge private transport-vessel for Verres. Have you not been
+exempted from your tax on corn? Have you not been exempted in
+regard to <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_158" id=
+"Page_158">158</a></span>naval and military recruits? Have you
+not been the receptacle of all his stolen goods? They will have to
+confess, these Mamertines, that many a ship laden with his spoils
+has left their port, and especially this huge transport-ship which
+they built for him!"</p>
+
+<p>In the De Suppliciis&mdash;the treatise about punishments, as
+the last division of this process is called&mdash;Cicero tells the
+world how Verres exacted vengeance from those who were opposed to
+him, and with what horrid cruelty he raged against his enemies. The
+stories, indeed, are very dreadful. It is harrowing to think that
+so evil a man should have been invested with powers so great for so
+bad a purpose. But that which strikes a modern reader most is the
+sanctity attached to the name of a Roman citizen, and the audacity
+with which the Roman Proconsul disregarded that sanctity. "Cives
+Romanus" is Cicero's cry from the beginning to the end. No doubt he
+is addressing himself to Romans, and seeking popularity, as he
+always did. But, nevertheless, the demands made upon the outside
+world at large by the glory of that appellation are astonishing,
+even when put forward on such an occasion as this. One Gavius
+escapes from a prison in Syracuse, and, making his way to Messana,
+foolishly boasts that he would be soon over in Italy, out of the
+way of Pr&aelig;tor Verres and his cruelties. Verres, unfortunately, is
+in Messana, and soon hears from some of his friends, the
+Mamertines, what Gavius was saying. He at once orders Gavius to be
+flogged in public. "Cives Romanus sum!" exclaims Gavius, no doubt
+truly. It suits Verres to pretend to disbelieve this, and to
+declare that the man is a runagate slave. The poor wretch still
+cries "Cives Romanus!" and trusts alone to that appeal. Whereupon
+Verres puts up a cross on the sea-shore, and has the man crucified
+in sight of Italy, so that he shall be able to see the country of
+which he is so proud. Whether he had done anything to deserve
+crucifixion, or flogging, or punishment at all, we are not told.
+The accusation against Verres is not for crucifying the man, but
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_159" id="Page_159">
+159</a></span>for crucifying the Roman. It is on this occasion
+that Cicero uses the words which have become proverbial as to the
+iniquity of this proceeding.<a name="FNanchor_129_129" id=
+"FNanchor_129_129"></a><a href="#Footnote_129_129" class=
+"fnanchor">129</a> During the telling of this story he explains
+this doctrine, claiming for the Roman citizen, all the world over,
+some such protection as freemasons are supposed to give each other,
+whether known or unknown. "Men of straw," he says, "of no special
+birth, go about the world. They resort to places they have never
+seen before, where they know none, and none know them. Here,
+trusting to their claim solely, they feel themselves to be
+safe&mdash;not only where our magistrates are to be found, who are
+bound both by law and by opinion, not only among other Roman
+citizens who speak their language and follow the same customs, but
+abroad, over the whole world, they find this to be sufficient
+protection."<a name="FNanchor_130_130" id="FNanchor_130_130"></a><a
+href="#Footnote_130_130" class="fnanchor">130</a> Then he goes on
+to say that if any Pr&aelig;tor may at his will put aside this sanctity,
+all the provinces, all the kingdoms, all the free states, all the
+world abroad, will very soon lose the feeling.</p>
+
+<p>But the most remarkable story is that told of a certain pirate
+captain. Verres had been remiss in regard to the pirates&mdash;very
+cowardly, indeed, if we are to believe Cicero. Piracy in the
+Mediterranean was at that time a terrible drawback to
+trade&mdash;that piracy that a year or two afterward Pompey was
+effectual in destroying. A governor in Sicily had, among other
+special duties, to keep a sharp lookout for the pirates. This
+Verres omitted so entirely that these scourges of the sea soon
+learned that they might do almost as they pleased on the Sicilian
+coasts. But it came to pass that on one day a pirate vessel fell by
+accident into the hands of the governor's officers. It was not
+taken, Cicero says, but was so overladen that it was picked up
+almost sinking.<a name="FNanchor_131_131" id=
+"FNanchor_131_131"></a><a href="#Footnote_131_131" class=
+"fnanchor">131</a> It was found to be full of <span class=
+'pagenum'><a name="Page_160" id="Page_160">160</a></span>fine,
+handsome men, of silver both plated and coined, and precious
+stuffs. Though not "taken," it was "found," and carried into
+Syracuse. Syracuse is full of the news, and the first demand is
+that the pirates, according to Roman custom, shall all be killed.
+But this does not suit Verres. The slave-markets of the Roman
+Empire are open, and there are men among the pirates whom it will
+suit him better to sell than to kill. There are six musicians,
+"symphoniacos homines," whom he sends as a present to a friend at
+Rome. But the people of Syracuse are very much in earnest. They are
+too sharp to be put off with pretences, and they count the number
+of slaughtered pirates. There are only some useless, weak, ugly old
+fellows beheaded from day to day; and being well aware how many men
+it must have taken to row and manage such a vessel, they demand
+that the full crew shall be brought to the block. "There is nothing
+in victory more sweet," says Cicero, "no evidence more sure, than
+to see those whom you did fear, but have now got the better of,
+brought out to tortures or death."<a name="FNanchor_132_132" id=
+"FNanchor_132_132"></a><a href="#Footnote_132_132" class=
+"fnanchor">132</a> Verres is so much frightened by the resolution
+of the citizens that he does not dare to neglect their wishes.
+There are lying in the prisons of Syracuse a lot of prisoners,
+Roman citizens, of whom he is glad to rid himself. He has them
+brought out, with their heads wrapped up so that they shall not be
+known, and has them beheaded instead of the pirates! A great deal
+is said, too, about the pirate captain&mdash;the arch-pirate, as he
+is called. There seems to have been some money dealings personally
+between him and Verres, on account of which Verres kept him hidden.
+At any rate, the arch-pirate was saved. "In such a manner this
+celebrated victory is managed.<a name="FNanchor_133_133" id=
+"FNanchor_133_133"></a><a href="#Footnote_133_133" class=
+"fnanchor">133</a> The pirate ship is taken, and the chief pirate
+is allowed to escape. The musicians are sent to Rome. The men who
+are good-looking and young are taken to the Pr&aelig;tor's house. As
+many Roman citizens as will fill their places are carried out <span
+class='pagenum'><a name="Page_161" id="Page_161">
+161</a></span>as public enemies, and are tortured and killed! All
+the gold and silver and precious stuffs are made a prize of by
+Verres!"</p>
+
+<p>Such are the accusations brought against this wonderful
+man&mdash;the truth of which has, I think, on the whole been
+admitted. The picture of Roman life which it displays is wonderful,
+that such atrocities should have been possible; and equally so of
+provincial subjection, that such cruelties should have been
+endured. But in it all the greatest wonder is that there should
+have risen up a man so determined to take the part of the weak
+against the strong with no reward before him, apparently with no
+other prospect than that of making himself odious to the party to
+which he belonged. Cicero was not a Gracchus, anxious to throw
+himself into the arms of the people; he was an oligarch by
+conviction, born to oligarchy, bred to it, convinced that by it
+alone could the Roman Republic be preserved. But he was convinced
+also that unless these oligarchs could be made to do their duty the
+Republic could not stand. Therefore it was that he dared to defy
+his own brethren, and to make the acquittal of Verres an
+impossibility. I should be inclined to think that the day on which
+Hortensius threw up the sponge, and Verres submitted to banishment
+and fine, was the happiest in the orator's life.</p>
+
+<p>Verres was made to pay a fine which was very insufficient for
+his crimes, and then to retire into comfortable exile. From this he
+returned to Rome when the Roman exiles were amnestied, and was
+shortly afterward murdered by Antony, as has been told before.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_162" id="Page_162">
+162</a></span></p>
+
+<h3><a name="CHAPTER_VII" id="CHAPTER_VII"></a><span class="smcap">Chapter VII.</span></h3>
+
+<h4><i>CICERO AS &AElig;DILE AND PR&AElig;TOR.</i></h4>
+
+<div class="sidenote"><span class="smcap">b.c.</span> 69,
+<i>&aelig;tat</i>. 38.</div>
+
+<p>The year after the trial of Verres was that of Cicero's
+&AElig;dileship. We know but little of him in the performance of the
+duties of this office, but we may gather that he performed them to
+the satisfaction of the people. He did not spend much money for
+their amusements, although it was the custom of &AElig;diles to ruin
+themselves in seeking popularity after this fashion; and yet when,
+two years afterward, he solicited the Pr&aelig;torship from the people,
+he was three times elected as first Pr&aelig;tor in all the
+comitia&mdash;three separate elections having been rendered
+necessary by certain irregularities and factious difficulties. To
+all the offices, one after another, he was elected in his first
+year&mdash;the first year possible in accordance with his
+age&mdash;and was elected first in honor, the first as Pr&aelig;tor, and
+then the first as Consul. This, no doubt, was partly due to his
+compliance with those rules for canvassing which his brother
+Quintus is said to have drawn out, and which I have quoted; but it
+proves also the trust which was felt in him by the people. The
+candidates, for the most part, were the candidates for the
+aristocracy. They were put forward with the idea that thus might
+the aristocratic rule of Rome be best maintained. Their elections
+were carried on by bribery, and the people were for the most part
+indifferent to the proceeding. Whether it might be a Verres, or an
+Antony, or a Hortensius, they took the money that was going. They
+allowed themselves to be delighted with the games, and they did as
+they were bid. But every now and then there came up a name which
+stirred them, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_163" id=
+"Page_163">163</a></span>and they went to the voting
+pens&mdash;ovilia&mdash;with a purpose of their own. When such a
+candidate came forward, he was sure to be first. Such had been
+Marius, and such had been the great Pompey, and such was Cicero.
+The two former were men successful in war, who gained the voices of
+the people by their victories. Cicero gained them by what he did
+inside the city. He could afford not to run into debt and ruin
+himself during his &AElig;dileship, as had been common with &AElig;diles,
+because he was able to achieve his popularity in another way. It
+was the chief duty of the &AElig;diles to look after the town
+generally&mdash;to see to the temples of the gods, to take care
+that houses did not tumble down, to look to the cleansing of the
+streets, and to the supply of water. The markets were under them,
+and the police, and the recurrent festivals. An active man, with
+common-sense, such as was Cicero, no doubt did his duty as &AElig;dile
+well.</p>
+
+<p>He kept up his practice as an advocate during his years of
+office. We have left to us the part of one speech and the whole of
+another spoken during this period. The former was in favor of
+Fonteius, whom the Gauls prosecuted for plundering them as
+Propr&aelig;tor, and the latter is a civil case on behalf of C&aelig;cina,
+addressed to the "Recuperatores," as had been that for Marcus
+Tullius. The speech for Fonteius is remarkable as being as hard
+against the provincial Gauls as his speech against Verres had been
+favorable to the Sicilians. But the Gauls were barbarians, whereas
+the Sicilians were Greeks. And it should be always remembered that
+Cicero spoke as an advocate, and that the praise and censure of an
+advocate require to be taken with many grains of salt. Nothing that
+these wretched Gauls could say against a Roman citizen ought to be
+accepted in evidence! "All the Romans," he says, "who have been in
+the province wish well to Fonteius. Would you rather believe these
+Gauls&mdash;led by what feeling? By the opinion of men! Is the
+opinion, then, of your enemies of greater weight than that of your
+fellow-citizens, or is it the greater credibility of the witnesses?
+Would you prefer, then, unknown <span class='pagenum'><a name=
+"Page_164" id="Page_164">164</a></span>men to
+known&mdash;dishonest men to honest&mdash;foreigners to your own
+countrymen&mdash;greedy men to those who come before you for
+nothing&mdash;men of no religion to those who fear the
+gods&mdash;those who hate the Empire and the name of Rome to allies
+and citizens who are good and faithful?"<a name="FNanchor_134_134"
+id="FNanchor_134_134"></a><a href="#Footnote_134_134" class=
+"fnanchor">134</a> In every word of this he begs the question so
+as to convince us that his own case was weak; and when he makes a
+final appeal to the pity of the judges we are sure that Fonteius
+was guilty. He tells the judges that the poor mother of the accused
+man has no other support than this son, and that there is a sister,
+one of the virgins devoted to the service of Vesta, who, being a
+vestal virgin, cannot have sons of her own, and is therefore
+entitled to have her brother preserved for her. When we read such
+arguments as these, we are sure that Fonteius had misused the
+Gauls. We believe that he was acquitted, because we are told that
+he bought a house in Rome soon afterward; but we feel that he
+escaped by the too great influence of his advocate. We are driven
+to doubt whether the power over words which may be achieved by a
+man by means of natural gifts, practice, and erudition, may not do
+evil instead of good. A man with such a tongue as that of Cicero
+will make the listener believe almost whatever he will; and the
+advocate is restrained by no horror of falsehood. In his profession
+alone it is considered honorable to be a bulwark to deception, and
+to make the worse appear the better cause. Cicero did so when the
+occasion seemed to him to require it, and has been accused of
+hypocrisy in consequence. There is a passage in one of the
+dialogues, De Oratore, which has been continually quoted against
+him because the word "fibs" has been used with approval. The orator
+is told how it may become him to garnish his good story with little
+white lies&mdash;"mendaciunculis."<a name="FNanchor_135_135" id=
+"FNanchor_135_135"></a><a href="#Footnote_135_135" class=
+"fnanchor">135</a> The advice does <span class='pagenum'><a name=
+"Page_165" id="Page_165">165</a></span>not indeed refer to
+facts, or to evidence, or to arguments. It goes no farther than to
+suggest that amount of exaggeration which is used by every teller
+of a good story in order that the story may be good. Such
+"mendaciuncula" are in the mouth of every diner-out in London, and
+we may pity the dinner-parties at which they are not used.
+Reference is made to them now because the use of the word by
+Cicero, having been misunderstood by some who have treated his name
+with severity, has been brought forward in proof of his falsehood.
+You shall tell a story about a very little man, and say that he is
+only thirty-six inches. You know very well that he is more than
+four feet high. That will be a "mendaciunculum," according to
+Cicero. The phrase has been passed on from one enemy to another,
+till the little fibs of Cicero's recommending have been supposed to
+be direct lies suggested by him to all advocates, and therefore
+continually used by him as an advocate. They have been only the
+garnishing of his drolleries. As an advocate, he was about as false
+and about as true as an advocate of our own day.<a name=
+"FNanchor_136_136" id="FNanchor_136_136"></a><a href=
+"#Footnote_136_136" class="fnanchor">136</a> That he was not
+paid, and that our English barristers are paid for the work they
+do, makes, I think, no difference either in the innocency or the
+falseness of the practice. I cannot but believe that, hereafter, an
+improved tone of general feeling will forbid a man of honor to use
+arguments which he thinks to be untrue, or to make others believe
+that which he does not believe himself. Such is not the state of
+things now in London, nor was it at Rome in Cicero's <span class=
+'pagenum'><a name="Page_166" id="Page_166">166</a></span>time.
+There are touches of eloquence in the plea for Fonteius, but the
+reader will probably agree with me that the orator was well aware
+that the late governor who was on his trial had misused those
+unfortunate Gauls.</p>
+
+<p>In the year following that of Cicero's &AElig;dileship were written
+the first of his epistles which have come to us. He was then not
+yet thirty-nine years old&mdash;<span class="smcap">b.c.</span>
+68&mdash;and during that year and the next seven were written
+eleven letters, all to Atticus. Those to his other friends&mdash;Ad
+Familiares, as we have been accustomed to call them; Ad Diversos,
+they are commonly called now&mdash;began only with the close of his
+consular year. How it has come to pass that there have been
+preserved only those which were written after a period of life at
+which most men cease to be free correspondents, cannot be said with
+certainty. It has probably been occasioned by the fact that he
+caused his letters to be preserved as soon as he himself perceived
+how great would be their value. Of the nature of their value it is
+hardly possible to speak too highly. I am not prepared, indeed, to
+agree with the often quoted assertion of Cornelius Nepos that he
+who has read his letters to Atticus will not lack much of the
+history of those days.<a name="FNanchor_137_137" id=
+"FNanchor_137_137"></a><a href="#Footnote_137_137" class=
+"fnanchor">137</a></p>
+
+<p>A man who should have read them and nothing else, even <span
+class='pagenum'><a name="Page_167" id="Page_167">
+167</a></span>in the days of Augustus, would not have learned much
+of the preceding age. But if not for the purpose of history, the
+letters generally have, if read aright, been all but enough for the
+purpose of biography. With a view to the understanding of the man's
+character, they have, I think, been enough. From them such a flood
+of light has been turned upon the writer that all his nobility and
+all his defects, all his aspirations and all his vacillations, have
+been made visible. We know how human he was, and how, too, he was
+only human&mdash;how he sighed for great events, and allowed
+himself to think sometimes that they could be accomplished by small
+man&oelig;uvres&mdash;how like a man he could be proud of his work and
+boast&mdash;how like a man he could despair and almost die. But I
+wish it to be acknowledged, by those who read his letters in order
+that they may also read his character, that they were, when
+written, private letters, intended to tell the truth, and that if
+they are to be believed in reference to his weaknesses, they are
+also to be believed in reference to his strength. If they are
+singularly transparent as to the man&mdash;opening, especially to
+Atticus, the doors of his soul more completely than would even any
+girl of the nineteenth century when writing to her bosom
+friend&mdash;they must be taken as being more honestly true. To
+regard the aspirations as hypocritical, and only the meaner
+effusions of his mind as emblematic of the true man, is both
+unreasonable and uncharitable. Nor, I think, will that reader grasp
+the way to see the truth who cannot teach himself what has in
+Cicero's case, been the effect of daring to tell to his friend an
+unvarnished tale. When with us some poor thought does make its way
+across our minds, we do not sit down and write it to another, nor,
+if we did, would an immortality be awarded to the letter. If one of
+us were to lose his all&mdash;as Cicero lost his all when he was
+sent into exile&mdash;I think it might well be that he should for a
+time be unmanned; but he would either not write, or, in writing,
+would hide much of his feelings. On losing his Tullia, some father
+of to-day <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_168" id=
+"Page_168">168</a></span>would keep it all in his heart, would
+not maunder out his sorrows. Even with our truest love for our
+friends, some fear is mingled which forbids the use of open words.
+Whether this be for good or for evil I will not say, but it is so.
+Cicero, whether he did or did not know that his letters would live,
+was impeded by no such fear. He said everything that there was
+within him&mdash;being in this, I should say, quite as unlike to
+other Romans of the day as he was to ourselves. In the collection
+as it has come to us there are about fifty letters&mdash;not from
+Cicero&mdash;written to Cicero by his brother, by Decimus Brutus,
+by Plancus, and others. It will, I think, be admitted that their
+tone is quite different from that used by himself. There are none,
+indeed, from Atticus&mdash;none written under terms of such easy
+friendship as prevailed when many were written by Cicero himself.
+It will probably be acknowledged that his manner of throwing
+himself open to his correspondent was peculiar to him. If this be
+so, he should surely have the advantage as well as the disadvantage
+of his own mode of utterance. The reader who allows himself to
+think that the true character of the man is to be read in the
+little sly things he said to Atticus, but that the nobler ideas
+were merely put forth to cajole the public, is as unfair to himself
+as he is to Cicero.</p>
+
+<p>In reading the entire correspondence&mdash;the letters from
+Cicero either to Atticus or to others&mdash;it has to be remembered
+that in the ordinary arrangement of them made by Gr&aelig;vius<a name=
+"FNanchor_138_138" id="FNanchor_138_138"></a><a href=
+"#Footnote_138_138" class="fnanchor">138</a> they are often
+incorrectly paced in regard to chronology. In subsequent times
+efforts have been made to restore them to their proper position,
+and so they should be read. The letters to Atticus and those Ad
+Diversos have generally been published separately. For the ordinary
+purpose of literary pleasure they may perhaps be best read in that
+way. The tone of <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_169" id=
+"Page_169">169</a></span>them is different. The great bulk of
+the correspondence is political, or quasi-political. The manner is
+much more familiar, much less severe&mdash;though not on that
+account indicating less seriousness&mdash;in those written to
+Atticus than in the others. With one or two signal exceptions,
+those to Atticus are better worth reading. The character of the
+writer may perhaps be best gathered from divided perusal; but for a
+general understanding of the facts of Cicero's life, the whole
+correspondence should be taken as it was written. It has been
+published in this shape as well as in the other, and will be used
+in this shape in my effort to portray the life of him who wrote
+them.<a name="FNanchor_139_139" id="FNanchor_139_139"></a><a href=
+"#Footnote_139_139" class="fnanchor">139</a></p>
+
+<div class="sidenote"><span class="smcap">b.c.</span> 68,
+<i>&aelig;tat</i> 39.</div>
+
+<p>We have three letters written when he was thirty-eight, in the
+year after his &AElig;dileship. In the first he tells his friend of the
+death of his cousin, Lucius Cicero, who had travelled with him into
+Sicily, and alludes to the disagreements which had taken place
+between Pomponia, the sister of Atticus, and her husband, Quintus
+Cicero&mdash;our Cicero's brother. Marcus, in all that he says of
+his brother, makes the best of him. That Quintus was a scholar and
+a man of parts there can be no doubt; one, too, who rose to high
+office in the Republic. But he was arrogant, of harsh temper, cruel
+to those dependent on him, and altogether unimbued with the
+humanity which was the peculiar characteristic of his brother.
+"When <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_170" id="Page_170">
+170</a></span>I found him to be in the wrong," says Cicero, in his
+first letter, "I wrote to him as to a brother whom I loved; but as
+to one younger than myself, and whom I was bound to tell of his
+fault." As is usual with correspondents, half the letter is taken
+up with excuses for not writing sooner; then he gives commissions
+for the purchase of statues for his Tusculan villa, of which we now
+hear for the first time, and tells his friend how his wife,
+Terentia, sends her love, though she is suffering from the gout.
+Tullia also, the dear little Tullia, "delici&aelig; nostr&aelig;,"<a name=
+"FNanchor_140_140" id="FNanchor_140_140"></a><a href=
+"#Footnote_140_140" class="fnanchor">140</a>sends her love. In
+the next, he says how a certain house which Atticus had intended to
+purchase had been secured by Fonteius for 130,000
+sesterces&mdash;something over &pound;1000, taking the sesterce at
+2 <i>d</i>. This no doubt was part of the plunder which Fonteius
+had taken from the Gauls. Quintus is getting on better with his
+wife. Then he tells his friend very abruptly that his father died
+that year on the eighth day before the kalends of December&mdash;on
+the 24th of November. Some question as to the date of the old man's
+death had probably been asked. He gives further commissions as to
+statues, and declares of his Tusculan villa that he is happy only
+when he is there. In the third letter he promises that he will be
+ready to pay one Cincius &pound;170 on a certain day, the price
+probably of more statues, and gives orders to his friend as to the
+buying of books. "All my prospect of enjoying myself at my ease
+depends on your goodness." These were the letters he wrote when he
+had just ceased to be &AElig;dile.</p>
+
+<p>From the next two years five letters remain to us, chiefly
+noticeable from the continued commissions given by Cicero to
+Atticus for statues. Statues and more statues are wanted as
+ornaments for his Tusculanum. Should there be more than <span
+class='pagenum'><a name="Page_171" id="Page_171">
+171</a></span>are needed for that villa, he will begin to decorate
+another that he has, the Formianum, near Caieta. He wants whatever
+Atticus may think proper for his "pal&aelig;stra" and "gymnasium."
+Atticus has a library or collection of maps for sale, and Cicero
+engages to buy them, though it seems that he has not at present
+quite got the money. He reserves, he says, all his little
+comings-in, "vindemiolas"&mdash;what he might make by selling his
+grapes as a lady in the country might get a little income from her
+spare butter&mdash;in order that he may have books as a resource
+for his old age. Again, he bids Atticus not to be afraid but what
+he, Cicero, will be able to buy them some day&mdash;which if he can
+do he will be richer than Crassus, and will envy no one his
+mansions or his lawns. He also declares that he has betrothed
+Tullia, then ten years old, to Caius Piso, son of Lucius Piso
+Frugi. The proposed marriage, which after three years of betrothal
+was duly solemnized, was considered to be in all respects
+desirable. Cicero thought very highly of his son-in-law, who was
+related to Calpurnius Piso, one of the Consuls of that year. So far
+everything was going well with our orator.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote"><span class="smcap">b.c.</span> 67,
+<i>&aelig;tat</i> 40</div>
+
+<p>He was then candidate for the Pr&aelig;torship, and was elected
+first, as has been already said. It was in that year, too that a
+law was passed in Rome, at the instance of one Gabinius, a tribune,
+authorizing Pompey to exterminate the pirates in the Mediterranean,
+and giving him almost unlimited power for this object. Pompey was
+not, indeed, named in this law. A single general, one who had been
+Consul, was to be approved by the Senate, with exclusive command by
+sea and for fifty miles on shore. He was to select as his own
+officers a hitherto unheard-of number, all of senatorial rank. It
+was well understood when the law was worded that Pompey alone could
+fill the place. The Senate opposed the scheme with all its power,
+although, seven years before, it had acknowledged the necessity of
+some measure for extirpating the pirates. But jealousies prevailed,
+and the Senate was afraid of <span class='pagenum'><a name=
+"Page_172" id="Page_172">172</a></span>Pompey. Gabinius,
+however, carried his law by the votes of the people, and Pompey was
+appointed.</p>
+
+<p>Nothing tells us more clearly the wretched condition of things
+in Rome at this time than this infliction of pirates, under which
+their commerce was almost destroyed. Sulla had re-established the
+outside show of a strong government&mdash;a government which was
+strong enough to enable rich men to live securely in Rome; but he
+had done nothing to consolidate the Empire. Even Lucullus in the
+East had only partially succeeded, leaving Mithridates still to be
+dealt with by Pompey. Of what nature was the government of the
+provinces under Sulla's aristocracy we learn from the trials of
+Verres, and of Fonteius, and of Catiline. The Mediterranean swarmed
+with pirates, who taught themselves to think that they had nothing
+to fear from the hands of the Romans. Plutarch declares to
+us&mdash;no doubt with fair accuracy, because the description has
+been admitted by subsequent writers&mdash;how great was the horror
+of these depredations.<a name="FNanchor_141_141" id=
+"FNanchor_141_141"></a><a href="#Footnote_141_141" class=
+"fnanchor">141</a> It is marvellous to us <span class=
+'pagenum'><a name="Page_173" id="Page_173">173</a></span>now
+that this should have been allowed&mdash;marvellous that pirates
+should reach such a pitch of importance that Verres had found it
+worth his while to sacrifice Roman citizens in their place. Pompey
+went forth with his officers, his fleets, and his money, and
+cleared the Mediterranean in forty days, as Plutarch says. Floras
+tells us that not a ship was lost by the Romans, and not a pirate
+left on the seas.<a name="FNanchor_142_142" id=
+"FNanchor_142_142"></a><a href="#Footnote_142_142" class=
+"fnanchor">142</a></p>
+
+<p>In the history of Rome at this time we find men of mark whose
+characters, as we read, become clear to us, or appear to become
+clear. Of Marius and of Sulla we have a defined idea. C&aelig;sar,
+with his imperturbable courage, absence of scruples, and assurance
+of success, comes home to us. Cicero, I think, we certainly may
+understand. Catiline, Cato, Antony, and Brutus have left their
+portraits with us. Of Pompey I must acknowledge for myself that I
+have but a vague conception. His wonderful successes seem to have
+been produced by so very little power of his own! He was not
+determined and venomous as was Marius; not cold-blooded and
+ruthless as was Sulla; certainly not confident as was C&aelig;sar;
+not humane as was Cicero; not passionate as Catiline; not stoic as
+was Cato; not reckless as was Antony, nor wedded to the idea of an
+oligarchy as was Brutus. Success came in his way, and he found
+it&mdash;found it again and again, till fortune seemed to have
+adopted him. Success lifted him higher and higher, till at last it
+seemed to him that he must be a Sulla whether he would or no.<a
+name="FNanchor_143_143" id="FNanchor_143_143"></a><a href=
+"#Footnote_143_143" class="fnanchor">143</a> <span class=
+'pagenum'><a name="Page_174" id="Page_174">174</a></span>But
+he could not endure the idea of a rival Sulla. I doubt whether
+ambition would have prompted him to fight for the empire of the
+Republic, had he not perceived that that empire would fall into
+C&aelig;sar's hands did he not grasp it himself. It would have
+satisfied him to let things go, while the citizens called him
+"Magnus," and regarded him as the man who could do a great thing if
+he would, if only no rivalship had been forced upon him.
+C&aelig;sar did force it on him, and then, as a matter of course,
+he fell. He must have understood warfare from his youth upward,
+knowing well the purposes of a Roman legion and of Roman
+auxiliaries. He had destroyed Sertorius in Spain, a man certainly
+greater than himself, and had achieved the honor of putting an end
+to the Servile war when Spartacus, the leader of the slaves and
+gladiators, had already been killed. He must have appreciated at
+its utmost the meaning of those words, "Cives Romanus." He was a
+handsome man, with good health, patient of labor, not given to
+luxury, reticent, I should say ungenerous, and with a strong touch
+of vanity; a man able to express but unable to feel friendship;
+with none of the highest attributes of manhood, but with all the
+second-rate attributes at their best; a capable, brave man, but one
+certain to fall crushed beneath the heel of such a man as
+C&aelig;sar, and as certain to leave such a one as Cicero in the
+lurch.</p>
+
+<p>It is necessary that the reader should attempt to realize to
+himself the personal characteristics of Pompey, as from this time
+forward Cicero's political life&mdash;and his life now became
+altogether political&mdash;was governed by that of Pompey. That
+this was the case to a great extent is certain&mdash;to a sad
+extent, I think. The two men were of the same age; but Pompey had
+become a general among soldiers before Cicero had ceased to be a
+pupil among advocates. As Cicero was making his way toward the
+front, Pompey was already the first among Romans. <span class=
+'pagenum'><a name="Page_175" id="Page_175">175</a></span>He
+had been Consul seven years before his proper time, and had lately,
+as we have seen, been invested with extraordinary powers in that
+matter of putting down the pirates. In some sort the mantle of
+Sulla had fallen upon him. He was the leader of what we may call
+the conservative party. If, which I doubt, the political governance
+of men was a matter of interest to him, he would have had them
+governed by oligarchical forms. Such had been the forms in Rome, in
+which, though the votes of the people were the source of all power,
+the votes hardly went further than the selection of this or that
+oligarch. Pompey no doubt felt the expediency of maintaining the
+old order of things, in the midst of which he had been born to high
+rank, and had achieved the topmost place either by fortune or by
+merit. For any heartfelt conviction as to what might be best for
+his country or his countrymen, in what way he might most surely use
+his power for the good of the citizens generally, we must, I think,
+look in vain to that Pompey whom history has handed down to us.
+But, of all matters which interested Cicero, the governance of men
+interested him the most. How should the great Rome of his day rise
+to greater power than ever, and yet be as poor as in the days of
+her comparative insignificance? How should Rome be ruled so that
+Romans might be the masters of the world, in mental gifts as well
+as bodily strength, in arts as well as in arms&mdash;as by valor,
+so by virtue? He, too, was an oligarch by strongest conviction. His
+mind could conceive nothing better than Consuls, Pr&aelig;tors, Censors,
+Tribunes, and the rest of it; with, however, the stipulation that
+the Consuls and the Pr&aelig;tors should be honest men. The condition
+was no doubt an impossible one; but this he did not or would not
+see. Pompey himself was fairly honest. Up to this time he had shown
+no egregious lust for personal power. His hands were clean in the
+midst of so much public plunder. He was the leader of the
+conservative party. The "Optimates," or "Boni," as Cicero
+indifferently calls them&mdash;meaning, as we should say, the upper
+classes, who were minded to stand by <span class='pagenum'><a name=
+"Page_176" id="Page_176">176</a></span>their
+order&mdash;believed in him, though they did not just at that time
+wish to confide to him the power which the people gave him. The
+Senate did not want another Sulla; and yet it was Sulla who had
+reinstated the Senate. The Senate would have hindered Pompey, if it
+could, from his command against the pirates, and again from his
+command against Mithridates. But he, nevertheless, was naturally
+their head, as came to be seen plainly when, seventeen years
+afterward, C&aelig;sar passed the Rubicon, and Cicero in his heart
+acknowledged Pompey as his political leader while Pompey lived.
+This, I think, was the case to a sad extent, as Pompey was
+incapable of that patriotic enthusiasm which Cicero demanded. As we
+go on we shall find that the worst episodes in Cicero's political
+career were created by his doubting adherence to a leader whom he
+bitterly felt to be untrue to himself, and in whom his trust became
+weaker and weaker to the end.</p>
+
+<p>Then came Cicero's Pr&aelig;torship. In the time of Cicero there were
+eight Pr&aelig;tors, two of whom were employed in the city, and the six
+others in the provinces. The "Pr&aelig;tor Urbanus" was confined to the
+city, and was regarded as the first in authority. This was the
+office filled by Cicero. His duty was to preside among the judges,
+and to name a judge or judges for special causes.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote"><span class="smcap">b.c.</span> 66,
+<i>&aelig;tat</i> 41.</div>
+
+<p>Cicero at this time, when he and Pompey were forty or forty-one,
+believed thoroughly in Pompey. When the great General was still
+away, winding up the affairs of his maritime war against the
+pirates, there came up the continually pressing question of the
+continuation of the Mithridatic war. Lucullus had been absent on
+that business nearly seven years, and, though he had been at first
+grandly victorious, had failed at last. His own soldiers, tired of
+their protracted absence, mutinied against him, and Glabrio, a
+later Consul, who had been sent to take the command out of his
+hands, had feared to encounter the difficulty. It was essential
+that something should be done, and one Manilius, a Tribune, a man
+of no repute <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_177" id=
+"Page_177">177</a></span>himself, but whose name has descended
+to all posterity in the oration Pro Lege Manilia, proposed to the
+people that Pompey should have the command. Then Cicero first
+entered, as we may say, on political life. Though he had been
+Qu&aelig;stor and &AElig;dile, and was now Pr&aelig;tor, he had taken a part only
+in executive administration. He had had his political ideas, and
+had expressed them very strongly in that matter of the judges,
+which, in the condition of Rome, was certainly a political question
+of great moment. But this he had done as an advocate, and had
+interfered only as a barrister of to-day might do, who, in arguing
+a case before the judges, should make an attack on some alleged
+misuse of patronage. Now, for the first time, he made a political
+harangue, addressing the people in a public meeting from the
+rostra. This speech is the oration Pro Lego Manilia. This he
+explains in his first words. Hitherto his addresses had been to the
+judges&mdash;Judices; now it is to the people&mdash;Quirites:
+"Although, Quirites, no sight has ever been so pleasant to me as
+that of seeing you gathered in crowds&mdash;although this spot has
+always seemed to me the fittest in the world for action and the
+noblest for speech&mdash;nevertheless, not my own will, indeed,
+but the duties of the profession which I have followed from my
+earliest years have hitherto hindered me from entering upon this
+the best path to glory which is open to any good man." It is only
+necessary for our purpose to say, in reference to the matter in
+question, that this command was given to Pompey in opposition to
+the Senate.</p>
+
+<p>As to the speech itself, it requires our attention on two
+points. It is one of those choice morsels of polished Latinity
+which have given to Cicero the highest rank among literary men, and
+have, perhaps, made him the greatest writer of prose which the
+world has produced. I have sometimes attempted to make a short list
+of his <i>chefs d'&oelig;uvre</i>&mdash;of his tidbits, as I must say,
+if I am bound to express myself in English. The list would never
+allow itself to be short, and so has become almost impossible; but,
+whenever the attempt has been made, this short oration in its <span
+class='pagenum'><a name="Page_178" id="Page_178">
+178</a></span>integrity has always been included in it. My space
+hardly permits me to insert specimens of the author's style, but I
+will give in an appendix<a name="FNanchor_144_144" id=
+"FNanchor_144_144"></a><a href="#Footnote_144_144" class=
+"fnanchor">144</a> two brief extracts as specimens of the beauty
+of words in Latin. I almost fancy that if properly read they would
+have a grace about them even to the ears of those to whom Latin is
+unknown. I venture to attach to them in parallel columns my own
+translation, acknowledging in despair how impossible I have found
+it to catch anything of the rhythm of the author. As to the beauty
+of the language I shall probably find no opponent. But a serious
+attack has been made on Cicero's character, because it has been
+supposed that his excessive praise was lavished on Pompey with a
+view of securing the great General's assistance in his candidature
+for the Consulship. Even Middleton repeats this accusation, and
+only faintly repels it. M. Du Rozoir, the French critic, declares
+that "in the whole oration there is not a word which was not
+dictated to Cicero the Pr&aelig;tor by his desire to become Consul, and
+that his own elevation was in his thoughts all through, and not
+that of Pompey." The matter would be one to us but of little
+moment, were it not that Cicero's character for honesty as a
+politician depends on the truth or falsehood of his belief in
+Pompey. Pompey had been almost miraculously fortunate up to this
+period of his life's career. He had done infinitely valuable
+service to the State. He had already crushed the pirates. There was
+good ground for believing that in his hands the Roman arms would be
+more efficacious against Mithridates than in those of any other
+General. All that Cicero says on this head, whatever might have
+been his motive for saying it, was at any rate true.</p>
+
+<p>A man desirous of rising in the service of his country of course
+adheres to his party. That Cicero was wrong in supposing that the
+Republic, which had in fact already fallen, could be re-established
+by the strength of any one man, could be bolstered <span class=
+'pagenum'><a name="Page_179" id="Page_179">179</a></span>up by
+any leader, has to be admitted; that in trusting to Pompey as a
+politician he leaned on a frail reed I admit; but I will not admit
+that in praising the man he was hypocritical or unduly
+self-seeking. In our own political contests, when a subordinate
+member of the Cabinet is zealously serviceable to his chief, we do
+not accuse him of falsehood because by that zeal he has also
+strengthened his own hands. How shall a patriot do the work of his
+country unless he be in high place? and how shall he achieve that
+place except by co-operation with those whom he trusts? They who
+have blamed Cicero for speaking on behalf of Pompey on this
+occasion, seem to me to ignore not only the necessities but the
+very virtues of political life.</p>
+
+<p>One other remarkable oration Cicero made during his
+Pr&aelig;torship&mdash;that, namely, in defence of Aulus Cluentius
+Habitus. As it is the longest, so is it the most intricate, and on
+account of various legal points the most difficult to follow of all
+his speeches. But there are none perhaps which tell us more of the
+condition, or perhaps I should say the possibilities, of life among
+the Romans of that day. The accusation against Roscius Amerinus was
+accompanied by horrible circumstances. The iniquities of Verres, as
+a public officer who had the power of blessing or of cursing a
+whole people, were very terrible; but they do not shock so much as
+the story here told of private life. That any man should have lived
+as did Oppianicus, or any woman as did Sassia, seems to prove a
+state of things worse than anything described by Juvenal a hundred
+and fifty years later. Cicero was no doubt unscrupulous as an
+advocate, but he could have gained nothing here by departing from
+verisimilitude. We must take the picture as given us as true, and
+acknowledge that, though law processes were common, crimes such as
+those of this man and of this woman were not only possible, but
+might be perpetrated with impunity. The story is too long and
+complicated to be even abridged; but it should be read by those who
+wish to know <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_180" id=
+"Page_180">180</a></span>the condition of life in Italy during
+the latter days of the Republic.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote"><span class="smcap">b.c.</span> 65,
+&aelig;tat 42.</div>
+
+<p>In the year after he was Pr&aelig;tor&mdash;in the first of the two
+years between his Pr&aelig;torship and Consulship, <span class=
+"smcap">b.c.</span> 65&mdash;he made a speech in defence of one
+Caius Cornelius, as to which we hear that the pleadings in the case
+occupied four days. This, with our interminable "causes
+c&eacute;l&egrave;bres," does not seem much to us, but Cicero's own
+speech was so long that in publishing it he divided it into two
+parts. This Cornelius had been Tribune in the year but one before,
+and was accused of having misused his power when in office. He had
+incurred the enmity of the aristocracy by attempts made on the
+popular side to restrain the Senate; especially by the stringency
+of a law proposed for stopping bribery at elections. Cicero's
+speeches are not extant. We have only some hardly intelligible
+fragments of them, which were preserved by Asconius,<a name=
+"FNanchor_145_145" id="FNanchor_145_145"></a><a href=
+"#Footnote_145_145" class="fnanchor">145</a> a commentator on
+certain of Cicero's orations; but there is ground for supposing
+that these Cornelian orations were at the time matter of as great
+moment as those spoken against Verres, or almost as those spoken
+against Catiline. Cicero defended Cornelius, who was attacked by
+the Senate&mdash;by the rich men who desired office and the
+government of provinces. The law proposed for the restriction of
+bribery at elections no doubt attempted to do more by the severity
+of its punishment than can be achieved by such means: it was
+mitigated, but was still admitted by Cicero to be too rigorous. The
+rancor of the Senate against Cornelius seems to have been due to
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_181" id="Page_181">
+181</a></span>this attempt; but the illegality with which he was
+charged, and for which he was tried, had reference to another law
+suggested by him&mdash;for restoring to the people the right of
+pardon which had been usurped by the Senate. Caius Cornelius seems
+to have been a man honest and eager in his purpose to save the
+Republic from the greed of the oligarchs, but&mdash;as had been the
+Gracchi&mdash;ready in his eagerness to push his own authority too
+far in his attempt to restrain that of the Senate. A second
+Tribune, in the interest of the Senate, attempted to exercise an
+authority which undoubtedly belonged to him, by inhibiting the
+publication or reading of the proposed law. The person whose duty
+it was to read it was stopped; then Cornelius pushed aside the
+inferior officer, and read it himself. There was much violence, and
+the men who brought the accusation about Cornelius&mdash;two
+brothers named Cominii&mdash;had to hide themselves, and saved
+their lives by escaping over the roofs of the houses.</p>
+
+<p>This took place when Cicero was standing for the Pr&aelig;torship,
+and the confusion consequent upon it was so great that it was for
+awhile impossible to carry on the election. In the year after his
+Pr&aelig;torship Cornelius was put upon his trial, and the two speeches
+were made.</p>
+
+<p>The matter seems to have been one of vital interest in Rome. The
+contest on the part of the Senate was for all that made public life
+dear to such a body. Not to bribe&mdash;not to be able to lay out
+money in order that money might be returned ten-fold, a
+hundred-fold&mdash;would be to them to cease to be aristocrats. The
+struggles made by the Gracchi, by Livius Drusus, by others whose
+names would only encumber us here, by this Cornelius, were the
+expiring efforts of those who really desired an honest Republic.
+Such were the struggles made by Cicero himself; though there was
+present always to him an idea, with which, in truth, neither the
+demagogues nor the aristocrats sympathized, that the reform could
+be effected, not by depriving the Senate of its power, but by
+teaching the Senate <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_182" id=
+"Page_182">182</a></span>to use it honestly. We can sympathize
+with the idea, but we are driven to acknowledge that it was
+futile.</p>
+
+<p>Though we know that this was so, the fragments of the speeches,
+though they have been made intelligible to us by the "argument" or
+story of them prefixed by Asconius in his notes, cannot be of
+interest to readers. They were extant in the time of Quintilian,
+who speaks of them with the highest praise.<a name=
+"FNanchor_146_146" id="FNanchor_146_146"></a><a href=
+"#Footnote_146_146" class="fnanchor">146</a> Cicero himself
+selects certain passages out of these speeches as examples of
+eloquence or rhythm,<a name="FNanchor_147_147" id=
+"FNanchor_147_147"></a><a href="#Footnote_147_147" class=
+"fnanchor">147</a> thus showing the labor with which he composed
+them, polishing them by the exercise of his ear as well as by that
+of his intellect. We know from Asconius that this trial was
+regarded at the time as one of vital interest.</p>
+
+<p>We have two letters from Cicero written in the year after his
+Pr&aelig;torship, both to Atticus, the first of which tells us of his
+probable competition for the Consulship; the second informs his
+friend that a son is born to him&mdash;he being then forty-two
+years old&mdash;and that he is thinking to undertake the defence of
+Catiline, who was to be accused of peculation as Propr&aelig;tor in
+Africa. "Should he be acquitted," says Cicero, "I should hope to
+have him on my side in the matter of my canvass. If he should be
+convicted, I shall be able to bear that too." There were to be six
+or seven candidates, of whom two, of course, would be chosen. It
+would be much to Cicero "to run," as our phrase goes, with the one
+who among his competitors <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_183"
+id="Page_183">183</a></span>would be the most likely to
+succeed. Catiline, in spite of his then notorious
+character&mdash;in the teeth of the evils of his government in
+Africa&mdash;was, from his birth, his connections, and from his
+ability, supposed to have the best chance. It was open to Cicero to
+defend Catiline as he had defended Fonteius, and we know from his
+own words that he thought of doing so. But he did not; nor did
+Cicero join himself with Catiline in the canvassing. It is probable
+that the nature of Catiline's character and intentions were now
+becoming clearer from day to day. Catiline was tried and acquitted,
+having, it is said, bribed the judges.</p>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_184" id="Page_184">
+184</a></span></p>
+
+<h3><a name="CHAPTER_VIII" id="CHAPTER_VIII"></a><span class="smcap">Chapter VIII.</span></h3>
+
+<h4><i>CICERO AS CONSUL.</i></h4>
+
+<p>Hitherto everything had succeeded with Cicero. His fortune and
+his fame had gone hand-in-hand. The good-will of the citizens had
+been accorded to him on all possible occasions. He had risen
+surely, if not quickly, to the top of his profession, and had so
+placed himself there as to have torn the wreath from the brow of
+his predecessor and rival, Hortensius. On no memorable occasion had
+he been beaten. If now and then he had failed to win a cause in
+which he was interested, it was as to some matter in which, as he
+had said to Atticus in speaking of his contemplated defence of
+Catiline, he was not called on to break his heart if he were
+beaten. We may imagine that his life had been as happy up to this
+point as a man's life may be. He had married well. Children had
+been born to him, who were the source of infinite delight. He had
+provided himself with houses, marbles, books, and all the
+intellectual luxuries which well-used wealth could produce. Friends
+were thick around him. His industry, his ability, and his honesty
+were acknowledged. The citizens had given him all that it was in
+their power to give. Now at the earliest possible day, with
+circumstances of much more than usual honor, he was put in the
+highest place which his country had to offer, and knew himself to
+be the one man in whom his country at this moment trusted. Then
+came the one twelve-month, the apex of his fortunes; and after
+that, for the twenty years that followed, there fell upon him one
+misery after another&mdash;one trouble on the head of another
+trouble&mdash;so cruelly <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_185"
+id="Page_185">185</a></span>that the reader, knowing the
+manner of the Romans, almost wonders that he condescended to
+live.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote"><span class="smcap">b.c.</span> 64,
+<i>&aelig;tat</i> 43</div>
+
+<p>He was chosen Consul, we are told, not by the votes but by the
+unanimous acclamation of the citizens. What was the exact manner of
+doing this we can hardly now understand. The Consuls were elected
+by ballot, wooden tickets having been distributed to the people for
+the purpose; but Cicero tells us that no voting tickets were used
+in his case, but that he was elected by the combined voice of the
+whole people.<a name="FNanchor_148_148" id=
+"FNanchor_148_148"></a><a href="#Footnote_148_148" class=
+"fnanchor">148</a> He had stood with six competitors. Of these it
+is only necessary to mention two, as by them only was Cicero's life
+affected, and as out of the six, only they seem to have come
+prominently forward during the canvassing. These were Catiline the
+conspirator, as we shall have to call him in dealing with his name
+in the next chapter, and Caius Antonius, one of the sons of Marc
+Antony, the great orator of the preceding age, and uncle of the
+Marc Antony with whom we are all so well acquainted, and with whom
+we shall have so much to do before we get to the end of this work.
+Cicero was so easily the first that it may be said of him that he
+walked over the course. Whether this was achieved by the
+Machiavellian arts which his brother Quintus taught in his treatise
+De Petitione Consulatus, or was attributable to his general
+popularity, may be a matter of doubt. As far as we can judge from
+the signs which remain to us of the public feeling of the period,
+it seems that he was at this time regarded with singular affection
+by his countrymen. He had robbed none, and had been cruel to no
+one. He had already abandoned the profit of provincial government&mdash;to
+which he was by custom entitled after the lapse <span
+class='pagenum'><a name="Page_186" id="Page_186">
+186</a></span>of his year's duty as Pr&aelig;tor&mdash;in order that he
+might remain in Rome among the people. Though one of the Senate
+himself&mdash;and full of the glory of the Senate, as he had
+declared plainly enough in that passage from one of the Verrine
+orations which I have quoted&mdash;he had generally pleaded on the
+popular side. Such was his cleverness, that even when on the
+unpopular side&mdash;as he may be supposed to have been when
+defending Fonteius&mdash;he had given a popular aspect to the cause
+in hand. We cannot doubt, judging from the loud expression of the
+people's joy at his election, that he had made himself beloved But,
+nevertheless, he omitted none of those cares which it was expected
+that a candidate should take. He made his electioneering speech "in
+toga candida"&mdash;in a white robe, as candidates did, and were
+thence so called. It has not come down to us, nor do we regret it,
+judging from the extracts which have been collected from the notes
+which Asconius wrote upon it. It was full of personal abuse of
+Antony and Catiline, his competitors. Such was the practice of Rome
+at this time, as it was also with us not very long since. We shall
+have more than enough of such eloquence before we have done our
+task. When we come to the language in which Cicero spoke of
+Clodius, his enemy, of Piso and Gabinius, the Consuls who allowed
+him to be banished, and of Marc Antony, his last great
+opponent&mdash;the nephew of the man who was now his
+colleague&mdash;we shall have very much of it. It must again be
+pleaded that the foul abuse which fell from other lips has not been
+preserved and that Cicero, therefore, must not be supposed to have
+been more foul mouthed than his rivals. We can easily imagine that
+he was more bitter than others, because he had more power to throw
+into his words the meaning which he intended them to convey.</p>
+
+<p>Antony was chosen as Cicero's colleague. It seems, from such
+evidence as we are able to get on the subject, that Cicero trusted
+Antony no better than he did Catiline, but, appreciating the wisdom
+of the maxim, "divide et impera"&mdash;separate your <span class=
+'pagenum'><a name="Page_187" id="Page_187">
+187</a></span>enemies and you will get the better of them, which
+was no doubt known as well then as now&mdash;he soon determined to
+use Antony as his ally against Catiline, who was presumed to reckon
+Antony among his fellow-conspirators. Sallust puts into the mouth
+of Catiline a declaration to this effect,<a name="FNanchor_149_149"
+id="FNanchor_149_149"></a><a href="#Footnote_149_149" class=
+"fnanchor">149</a> and Cicero did use Antony for the purpose. The
+story of Catiline's conspiracy is so essentially the story of
+Cicero's Consulship, that I may be justified in hurrying over the
+other events of his year's rule; but still there is something that
+must be told. Though Catiline's conduct was under his eye during
+the whole year, it was not till October that the affairs in which
+we shall have to interest ourselves commenced.</p>
+
+<p>Of what may have been the nature of the administrative work done
+by the great Roman officers of State we know very little; perhaps I
+might better say that we know nothing. Men, in their own diaries,
+when they keep them, or even in their private letters, are seldom
+apt to say much of those daily doings which are matter of routine
+to themselves, and are by them supposed to be as little interesting
+to others. A Prime-minister with us, were he as prone to reveal
+himself in correspondence as was Cicero with his friend Atticus,
+would hardly say when he went to the Treasury Chambers or what he
+did when he got there. We may imagine that to a Cabinet Minister
+even a Cabinet Council would, after many sittings, become a matter
+of course. A leading barrister would hardly leave behind him a
+record of his work in chambers. It has thus come to pass that,
+though we can picture to ourselves a Cicero before the judges, or
+addressing the people from the rostra, or uttering his opinion in
+the Senate, we know nothing of him as he sat in his office and did
+his consular work. We cannot but suppose <span class='pagenum'><a
+name="Page_188" id="Page_188">188</a></span>that there must
+have been an office with many clerks. There must have been heavy
+daily work. The whole operation of government was under the
+Consul's charge, and to Cicero, with a Catiline on his hands, this
+must have been more than usually heavy. How he did it, with what
+assistance, sitting at what writing-table, dressed in what robes,
+with what surroundings of archives and red tape, I cannot make
+manifest to myself. I can imagine that there must have been much of
+dignity, as there was with all leading Romans, but beyond that I
+cannot advance even in fancying what was the official life of a
+Consul.</p>
+
+<p>In the old days the Consul used, as a matter of course, to go
+out and do the fighting. When there was an enemy here, or an enemy
+there, the Consul was bound to hurry off with his army, north or
+south, to different parts of Italy. But gradually this system
+became impracticable. Distances became too great, as the Empire
+extended itself beyond the bounds of Italy, to admit of the absence
+of the Consuls. Wars prolonged themselves through many campaigns,
+as notably did that which was soon to take place in Gaul under
+C&aelig;sar. The Consuls remained at home, and Generals were sent
+out with proconsular authority. This had become so certainly the
+case, that Cicero on becoming Consul had no fear of being called on
+to fight the enemies of his country. There was much fighting then
+in course of being done by Pompey in the East; but this would give
+but little trouble to the great officers at home, unless it might
+be in sending out necessary supplies.</p>
+
+<p>The Consul's work, however, was severe enough. We find from his
+own words, in a letter to Atticus written in the year but one after
+his Consulship, 61 <span class="smcap">b.c.</span>, that as Consul
+he made twelve public addresses. Each of them must have been a work
+of labor, requiring a full mastery over the subject in hand, and an
+arrangement of words very different in their polished perfection
+from the generality of parliamentary speeches to which we are
+accustomed. The getting up of his cases must have taken great time.
+Letters went slowly and at a heavy cost. <span class='pagenum'><a
+name="Page_189" id="Page_189">189</a></span>Writing must have
+been tedious when that most common was done with a metal point on
+soft wax. An advocate who was earnest in a case had to do much for
+himself. We have heard how Cicero made his way over to Sicily,
+creeping in a little boat through the dangers prepared for him, in
+order that he might get up the evidence against Verres. In
+defending Aulus Cluentius when he was Pr&aelig;tor, Cicero must have
+found the work to have been immense. In preparing the attack upon
+Catiline it seems that every witness was brought to himself. There
+were four Catiline speeches made in the year of his Consulship, but
+in the same year many others were delivered by him. He mentions,
+as we shall see just now, twelve various speeches
+made in the year of his Consulship.</p>
+
+<p>I imagine that the words spoken can in no case have been
+identical with those which have come to us&mdash;which were, as we
+may say, prepared for the press by Tiro, his slave and secretary.
+We have evidence as to some of them, especially as to the second
+Catiline oration, that time did not admit of its being written and
+learned by heart after the occurrence of the circumstances to which
+it alludes. It needs must have been extemporary, with such mental
+preparation as one night may have sufficed to give him. How the
+words may have been taken down in such a case we do not quite know;
+but we are aware that short-hand writers were employed, though
+there can hardly have been a science of stenography perfected as is
+that with us.<a name="FNanchor_150_150" id=
+"FNanchor_150_150"></a><a href="#Footnote_150_150" class=
+"fnanchor">150</a> The words which we read were probably much
+polished before they were published, but how far this was done we
+do not know. What we do know is that the words which <span class=
+'pagenum'><a name="Page_190" id="Page_190">190</a></span>he
+spoke moved, convinced, and charmed those who heard them, as do the
+words we read move, convince and charm us. Of these twelve consular
+speeches Cicero gives a special account to his friend. "I will send
+you," he says, "the speechlings<a name="FNanchor_151_151" id=
+"FNanchor_151_151"></a><a href="#Footnote_151_151" class=
+"fnanchor">151</a> which you require, as well as some others,
+seeing that those which I have written out at the request of a few
+young men please you also. It was an advantage to me here to follow
+the example of that fellow-citizen of yours in those orations which
+he called his Philippics. In these he brightened himself up, and
+discarded his 'nisi prius' way of speaking, so that he might
+achieve something more dignified, something more statesman-like. So
+I have done with these speeches of mine which may be called
+'consulares,'" as having been made not only in his consular year
+but also with something of consular dignity. "Of these, one, on the
+new land laws proposed, was spoken in the Senate on the kalends of
+January. The second, on the same subject, to the people. The third
+was respecting Otho's law.<a name="FNanchor_152_152" id=
+"FNanchor_152_152"></a><a href="#Footnote_152_152" class=
+"fnanchor">152</a> The fourth was in defence of Rabirius.<a name=
+"FNanchor_153_153" id="FNanchor_153_153"></a><a href=
+"#Footnote_153_153" class="fnanchor">153</a> The fifth was in
+reference to the children of those who had lost their property and
+their rank under Sulla's proscription.<a name="FNanchor_154_154"
+id="FNanchor_154_154"></a><a href="#Footnote_154_154" class=
+"fnanchor">154</a> The sixth was an address to the people, and
+explained <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_191" id=
+"Page_191">191</a></span>why I renounced my provincial
+government.<a name="FNanchor_155_155" id="FNanchor_155_155"></a><a
+href="#Footnote_155_155" class="fnanchor">155</a> The seventh
+drove Catiline out of the city. The eighth was addressed to the
+people the day after Catiline fled. The ninth was again spoken to
+the people, on the day on which the Allobroges gave their evidence.
+Then, again, the tenth was addressed to the Senate on the fifth of
+December"&mdash;also respecting Catiline. "There are also two short
+supplementary speeches on the Agrarian war. You shall have the
+whole body of them. As what I write and what I do are equally
+interesting to you, you will gather from the same documents all my
+doings and all my sayings."</p>
+
+<p>It is not to be supposed that in this list are contained all the
+speeches which he made in his consular year, but those only which
+he made as Consul&mdash;those to which he was desirous of adding
+something of the dignity of statesmanship, something beyond the
+weight attached to his pleadings as a lawyer. As an advocate,
+Consul though he was, he continued to perform his work; from whence
+we learn that no State dignity was so high as to exempt an
+established pleader from the duty of defending his friends.
+Hortensius, when Consul elect, had undertaken to defend Verres.
+Cicero defended Murena when he was Consul. He defended C.
+Calpurnius Piso also, who was accused, as were so many, of
+proconsular extortion; but whether in this year or in the preceding
+is not, I think, known.<a name="FNanchor_156_156" id=
+"FNanchor_156_156"></a><a href="#Footnote_156_156" class=
+"fnanchor">156</a> Of his <span class='pagenum'><a name=
+"Page_192" id="Page_192">192</a></span>speech on that occasion
+we have nothing remaining. Of his pleading for Murena we have, if
+not the whole, the material part, and, though nobody cares very
+much for Murena now, the oration is very amusing. It was made
+toward the end of the year, on the 20th of November, after the
+second Catiline oration, and before the third, at the very moment
+in which Cicero was fully occupied with the evidence on which he
+intended to convict Catiline's fellow-conspirators. As I read it I
+am carried away by wonder, rather than admiration, at the energy of
+the man who could at such a period of his life give up his time to
+master the details necessary for the trial of Murena.</p>
+
+<p>Early in the year Cicero had caused a law to be
+passed&mdash;which, after him, was called the Lex
+Tullia&mdash;increasing the stringency of the enactments against
+bribery on the part of consular candidates. His intention had
+probably been to hinder Catiline, who was again about to become a
+candidate. But Murena, who was elected, was supposed to have been
+caught in the meshes of the net, and also Silanus, the other Consul
+designate. Cato, the man of stern nature, the great Stoic of the
+day, was delighted to have an opportunity of proceeding against
+some one, and not very sorry to attack Murena with weapons provided
+from the armory of Murena's friend, Cicero. Silanus, however, who
+happened to be cousin to Cato, was allowed to pass unmolested.
+Sulpicius, who was one of the disappointed candidates, Cato, and
+Postumius were the accusers. Hortensius, Crassus, and Cicero were
+combined together for the defence of Murena. But as we read the
+single pleading that has come to us, we feel that, unlike those
+Roman trials generally, this was carried on without any acrimony on
+either side. I think it must have been that Cato wished <span
+class='pagenum'><a name="Page_193" id="Page_193">
+193</a></span>to have an opportunity of displaying his virtue, but
+it had been arranged that Murena was to be acquitted. Murena was
+accused, among other things, of dancing! Greeks might dance, as we
+hear from Cornelius Nepos,<a name="FNanchor_157_157" id=
+"FNanchor_157_157"></a><a href="#Footnote_157_157" class=
+"fnanchor">157</a> but for a Roman Consul it would be disgraceful
+in the highest extreme. A lady, indeed, might dance, but not much.
+Sallust tells us of Sempronia&mdash;who was, indeed, a very bad
+female if all that he says of her be true&mdash;that she danced
+more elegantly than became an honest woman.<a name=
+"FNanchor_158_158" id="FNanchor_158_158"></a><a href=
+"#Footnote_158_158" class="fnanchor">158</a> She was the wife of
+a Consul. But a male Roman of high standing might not dance at all.
+Cicero defends his friend by showing how impossible it
+was&mdash;how monstrous the idea. "No man would dance unless drunk
+or mad." Nevertheless, I imagine that Murena had danced.</p>
+
+<p>Cicero seizes an opportunity of quizzing Cato for his stoicism,
+and uses it delightfully. Horace was not more happy when, in
+defence of Aristippus, he declared that any philosopher would turn
+up his nose at cabbage if he could get himself asked to the tables
+of rich men.<a name="FNanchor_159_159" id="FNanchor_159_159"></a><a
+href="#Footnote_159_159" class="fnanchor">159</a> "There was one
+Zeno," Cicero says, "who laid down laws. No wise man would forgive
+any fault. No man worthy of the name of man would allow himself to
+be pitiful. Wise men are beautiful, even though deformed; rich
+though penniless; kings though they be slaves. We who are not wise
+are mere exiles, runagates, enemies of our country, and madmen. Any
+fault is an unpardonable crime. To kill an old cock, if you do not
+want it, is as bad as to murder your father!"<a name=
+"FNanchor_160_160" id="FNanchor_160_160"></a><a href=
+"#Footnote_160_160" class="fnanchor">160</a> And these doctrines,
+he goes on to say, which are used by most of us merely as something
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_194" id="Page_194">
+194</a></span>to talk about, this man Cato absolutely believes,
+and tries to live by them. I shall have to refer back to this when
+I speak of Cicero's philosophy more at length; but his common-sense
+crops up continually in the expressions which he uses for defending
+the ordinary conditions of a man's life, in opposition to that
+impossible superiority to mundane things which the philosophers
+professed to teach their pupils. He turns to Cato and asks him
+questions, which he answers himself with his own philosophy: "Would
+you pardon nothing? Well, yes; but not all things. Would you do
+nothing for friendship? Sometimes, unless duty should stand in the
+way. Would you never be moved to pity? I would maintain my habit of
+sincerity, but something must no doubt be allowed to humanity. It
+is good to stick to your opinion, but only until some better
+opinion shall have prevailed with you." In all this the humanity of
+our Cicero, as opposed equally to the impossible virtue of a Cato
+or the abominable vice of a Verres, is in advance of his age, and
+reminds us of what Christ has taught us.</p>
+
+<p>But the best morsel in the whole oration is that in which he
+snubs the lawyers. It must be understood that Cicero did not pride
+himself on being a lawyer. He was an advocate, and if he wanted law
+there were those of an inferior grade to whom he could go to get
+it. In truth, he did understand the law, being a man of deep
+research, who inquired into everything. As legal points had been
+raised, he thus addresses Sulpicius, who seems to have affected a
+knowledge of jurisprudence, who had been a candidate for the
+Consulship, and who was his own intimate friend: "I must put you
+out of your conceit," he says; "it was your other gifts, not a
+knowledge of the laws&mdash;your moderation, your wisdom, your
+justice&mdash;which, in my opinion, made you worthy of being loved.
+I will not say you threw away your time in studying law, but it was
+not thus you made yourself worthy of the Consulship.<a name=
+"FNanchor_161_161" id="FNanchor_161_161"></a><a href=
+"#Footnote_161_161" class="fnanchor">161</a> <span class=
+'pagenum'><a name="Page_195" id="Page_195">195</a></span>That
+power of eloquence, majestic and full of dignity which has so often
+availed in raising a man to the Consulship, is able by its words to
+move the minds of the Senate and the people and the judges.<a name=
+"FNanchor_162_162" id="FNanchor_162_162"></a><a href=
+"#Footnote_162_162" class="fnanchor">162</a> But in such a poor
+science as that of law what honor can there be? Its details are
+taken up with mere words and fragments of words.<a name=
+"FNanchor_163_163" id="FNanchor_163_163"></a><a href=
+"#Footnote_163_163" class="fnanchor">163</a> They forget all
+equity in points of law, and stick to the mere letter."<a name=
+"FNanchor_164_164" id="FNanchor_164_164"></a><a href=
+"#Footnote_164_164" class="fnanchor">164</a> He goes through a
+presumed scene of chicanery, which, Consul as he was, he must have
+acted before the judges and the people, no doubt to the extreme
+delight of them all. At last he says, "Full as I am of business, if
+you raise my wrath I will make myself a lawyer, and learn it all in
+three days."<a name="FNanchor_165_165" id="FNanchor_165_165"></a><a
+href="#Footnote_165_165" class="fnanchor">165</a> From these and
+many other passages in Cicero's writings and speeches, and also
+from Quintilian, we learn that a Roman advocate was by no means
+the same as an English barrister. The science which he was supposed
+to have learned was simply that of telling his story in effective
+language. It no doubt came to pass that he had much to do in
+getting up the details of his story&mdash;what we may call the
+evidence&mdash;but he looked elsewhere, to men of another
+profession, for his law. The "juris consultus" or the "juris
+peritus" was the lawyer, and as such was regarded as being of much
+less importance than the "patronus" or advocate, who stood before
+the whole city and pleaded the cause. In this trial of Murena, who
+was by trade a soldier, it suited Cicero to belittle lawyers and to
+extol the army. When he is telling Sulpicius that it was not by
+being a lawyer that a man could become Consul, he goes on to praise
+the high dignity of his client's profession. "The greatest glory is
+achieved by those who excel in battle. All our empire, all our
+republic, is defended and made strong by them."<a name=
+"FNanchor_166_166" id="FNanchor_166_166"></a><a href=
+"#Footnote_166_166" class="fnanchor">166</a> It was thus that the
+advocate could speak! This comes from the man who always <span
+class='pagenum'><a name="Page_196" id="Page_196">
+196</a></span>took glory to himself in declaring that the "toga"
+was superior to helmet and shield. He had already declared that
+they erred who thought that they were going to get his own private
+opinion in speeches made in law courts.<a name="FNanchor_167_167"
+id="FNanchor_167_167"></a><a href="#Footnote_167_167" class=
+"fnanchor">167</a> He knew how to defend his friend Murena, who
+was a soldier, and in doing so could say very sharp things, though
+yet in joke, against his friend Sulpicius, the lawyer. But in truth
+few men understood the Roman law better than did Cicero.</p>
+
+<p>But we must go back to that agrarian law respecting which, as he
+tells us, four of his consular speeches were made. This had been
+brought forward by Rullus, one of the Tribunes, toward the end of
+the last year. The Tribunes came into office in December, whereas
+at this period of the Republic the Consuls were in power only on
+and from January 1st. Cicero, who had been unable to get the
+particulars of the new law till it had been proclaimed, had but a
+few days to master its details. It was, to his thinking, altogether
+revolutionary. We have the words of many of the clauses; and though
+it is difficult at this distance of time to realize what would have
+been its effect, I think we are entitled to say that it was
+intended to subvert all property. Property, speaking of it
+generally, cannot be destroyed The land remains, and the combined
+results of man's industry are too numerous, too large, and too
+lasting to become a wholesale prey to man's anger or madness. Even
+the elements when out of order can do but little toward perfecting
+destruction. A deluge is wanted&mdash;or that crash of doom which,
+whether it is to come or not, is believed by the world to be very
+distant. But it is within human power to destroy possession, and
+redistribute the goods which industry, avarice, or perhaps
+injustice has congregated. They who own property are in these days
+so much stronger than those who have none, that an idea of any such
+redistribution does not create much alarm among the possessors. The
+spirit of <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_197" id=
+"Page_197">197</a></span>communism does not prevail among
+people who have learned that it is, in truth, easier to earn than
+to steal. But with the Romans political economy had naturally not
+advanced so far as with us. A subversion of property had to a great
+extent taken place no later than in Sulla's time. How this had been
+effected the story of the property of Roscius Amerinus has
+explained to us. Under Sulla's enactments no man with a house, with
+hoarded money, with a family of slaves, with rich ornaments, was
+safe. Property had been made to change hands recklessly,
+ruthlessly, violently, by the illegal application of a law
+promulgated by a single individual, who, however, had himself been
+instigated by no other idea than that of re-establishing the
+political order of things which he approved. Rullus, probably with
+other motives, was desirous of effecting a subversion which, though
+equally great, should be made altogether in a different direction.
+The ostensible purpose was something as follows: as the Roman
+people had by their valor and wisdom achieved for Rome great
+victories, and therefore great wealth, they, as Roman citizens,
+were entitled to the enjoyment of what they had won; whereas, in
+fact, the sweets of victory fell to the lot only of a few
+aristocrats. For the reform of this evil it should be enacted that
+all public property which had been thus acquired, whether land or
+chattels, should be sold, and with the proceeds other lands should
+be bought fit for the use of Roman citizens, and be given to those
+who would choose to have it. It was specially suggested that the
+rich country called the Campania&mdash;that in which Naples now
+stands with its adjacent isles&mdash;should be bought up and given
+over to a great Roman colony. For the purpose of carrying out this
+law ten magistrates should be appointed, with plenipotentiary power
+both as to buying and selling. There were many underplots in this.
+No one need sell unless he chose to sell; but at this moment much
+land was held by no other title than that of Sulla's proscriptions.
+The present possessors were in daily fear of dispossession, by some
+new law made <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_198" id=
+"Page_198">198</a></span>with the object of restoring their
+property to those who had been so cruelly robbed. These would be
+very glad to get any price in hand for land of which their tenure
+was so doubtful; and these were the men whom the "decemviri," or
+ten magistrates, would be anxious to assist. We are told that the
+father-in-law of Rullus himself had made a large acquisition by his
+use of Sulla's proscriptions. And then there would be the
+instantaneous selling of the vast districts obtained by conquest
+and now held by the Roman State. When so much land would be thrown
+into the market it would be sold very cheap and would be sold to
+those whom the "decemviri" might choose to favor. We can hardly now
+hope to unravel all the intended details, but we may be sure that
+the basis on which property stood would have been altogether
+changed by the measure. The "decemviri" were to have plenary power
+for ten years. All the taxes in all the provinces were to be sold,
+or put up to market. Everything supposed to belong to the Roman
+State was to be sold in every province, for the sake of collecting
+together a huge sum of money, which was to be divided in the shape
+of land among the poorer Romans. Whatever may have been the private
+intentions of Rullus, whether good or bad, it is evident, even at
+this distance of time, that a redistribution of property was
+intended which can only be described as a general subversion. To
+this the new Consul opposed himself vehemently, successfully, and,
+we must needs say, patriotically.</p>
+
+<p>The intense interest which Cicero threw into his work is as
+manifest in these agrarian orations as in those subsequently made
+as to the Catiline conspiracy. He ascends in his energy to a
+dignity of self-praise which induces the reader to feel that a man
+who could so speak of himself without fear of contradiction had a
+right to assert the supremacy of his own character and intellect.
+He condescends, on the other hand, to a virulence of personal abuse
+against Rullus which, though it is to our taste offensive, is, even
+to us, persuasive, making us feel that <span class='pagenum'><a
+name="Page_199" id="Page_199">199</a></span>such a man should
+not have undertaken such a work. He is describing the way in which
+the bill was first introduced: "Our Tribunes at last enter upon
+their office. The harangue to be made by Rullus is especially
+expected. He is the projector of the law, and it was expected that
+he would carry himself with an air of special audacity. When he was
+only Tribune elect he began to put on a different countenance, to
+speak with a different voice, to walk with a different step. We all
+saw how he appeared with soiled raiment, with his person uncared
+for, and foul with dirt, with his hair and beard uncombed and
+untrimmed."<a name="FNanchor_168_168" id="FNanchor_168_168"></a><a
+href="#Footnote_168_168" class="fnanchor">168</a> In Rome men
+under afflictions, particularly if under accusation, showed
+themselves in soiled garments so as to attract pity, and the
+meaning here is that Rullus went about as though under grief at the
+condition of his poor fellow-citizens, who were distressed by the
+want of this agrarian law. No description could be more likely to
+turn an individual into ridicule than this of his taking upon
+himself to represent in his own person the sorrows of the city. The
+picture of the man with the self-assumed garments of public woe, as
+though he were big enough to exhibit the grief of all Rome, could
+not but be effective. It has been supposed that Cicero was
+insulting the Tribune because he was dirty. Not so. He was
+ridiculing Rullus because Rullus had dared to go about in
+mourning&mdash;"sordidatus"&mdash;on behalf of his country.</p>
+
+<p>But the tone in which Cicero speaks of himself is magnificent.
+It is so grand as to make us feel that a Consul of Rome, who had
+the cares of Rome on his shoulders, was entitled to declare his own
+greatness to the Senate and to the people. There are the two
+important orations&mdash;that spoken first in the Senate, and then
+the speech to the people from which I have already quoted the
+passage personal to Rullus. In both of them he declares his own
+idea of a Consul, and of himself as Consul. He has been speaking of
+the effect of the proposed <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_200"
+id="Page_200">200</a></span>law on the revenues of the State,
+and then proceeds: "But I pass by what I have to say on that matter
+and reserve it for the people. I speak now of the danger which
+menaces our safety and our liberty. For what will there be left to
+us untouched in the Republic, what will remain of your authority
+and freedom, when Rullus, and those whom you fear much more than
+Rullus,<a name="FNanchor_169_169" id="FNanchor_169_169"></a><a
+href="#Footnote_169_169" class="fnanchor">169</a> with this band
+of ready knaves, with all the rascaldom of Rome, laden with gold
+and silver, shall have seized on Capua and all the cities round? To
+all this, Senators"&mdash;Patres conscripti he calls them&mdash;"I
+will oppose what power I have. As long as I am Consul I will not
+suffer them to carry out their designs against the Republic.</p>
+
+<p>"But you, Rullus, and those who are with you, have been mistaken
+grievously in supposing that you will be regarded as friends of the
+people in your attempts to subvert the Republic in opposition to a
+Consul who is known in very truth to be the people's friend I call
+upon you, I invite you to meet me in the assembly. Let us have the
+people of Rome as a judge between us. Let us look round and see
+what it is that the people really desire. We shall find that there
+is nothing so dear to them as peace and quietness and ease. You
+have handed over the city to me full of anxiety, depressed with
+fear, disturbed by these projected laws and seditious assemblies."
+(It must be remembered that he had only on that very day begun his
+Consulship) "The wicked you have filled with hope, the good with
+fear. You have robbed the Forum of loyalty and the Republic of
+dignity. But now, when in the midst of these troubles of mind and
+body, when in this great darkness the voice and the authority of
+the Consul has been heard by the people&mdash;when he shall have
+made it plain that there is no cause <span class='pagenum'><a name=
+"Page_201" id="Page_201">201</a></span>for fear, that no
+strange army shall enroll itself, no bands collect themselves; that
+there shall be no new colonies, no sale of the revenue, no altered
+empire, no royal 'decemvirs,' no second Rome, no other centre of
+rule but this; that while I am Consul there shall be perfect peace,
+perfect ease&mdash;do you suppose that I shall dread the superior
+popularity of your new agrarian law? Shall I, do you think, be
+afraid to hold my own against you in an assembly of the citizens
+when I shall have exposed the iniquity of your designs, the fraud
+of this law, the plots which your Tribunes of the people, popular
+as they think themselves, have contrived against the Roman people?
+Shall I fear&mdash;I who have determined to be Consul after that
+fashion in which alone a man may do so in dignity and freedom,
+reaching to ask nothing for myself which any Tribune could object
+to have given to me?"<a name="FNanchor_170_170" id=
+"FNanchor_170_170"></a><a href="#Footnote_170_170" class=
+"fnanchor">170</a></p>
+
+<p>This was to the Senate, but he is bolder still when he addresses
+the people. He begins by reminding them that it has always been the
+custom of the great officers of state, who have enjoyed the right
+of having in their houses the busts and images of their ancestors,
+in their first speech to the people to join with thanks for the
+favors done to themselves some records of the noble deeds done by
+their forefathers. <a name="FNanchor_171_171" id=
+"FNanchor_171_171"></a><a href="#Footnote_171_171" class=
+"fnanchor">171</a> He, however, could do nothing of the kind: he
+had no such right: none in his family had achieved such dignity. To
+speak of himself might seem too proud, but to be silent would be
+ungrateful. Therefore would he restrain himself, but would still
+say something, so that he might acknowledge what he had received.
+Then he would leave it for them to judge whether he had deserved
+what they had done for him.</p>
+
+<p>"It is long ago&mdash;almost beyond the memory of us now
+here<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_202" id="Page_202">
+202</a></span>&mdash;since you last made a new man Consul.<a name=
+"FNanchor_172_172" id="FNanchor_172_172"></a><a href=
+"#Footnote_172_172" class="fnanchor">172</a> That high office the
+nobles had reserved for themselves, and defended it, as it were,
+with ramparts. You have secured it for me, so that in future it
+shall be open to any who may be worthy of it. Nor have you only
+made me a Consul, much as that is, but you have done so in such a
+fashion that but few among the old nobles have been so treated, and
+no new man&mdash;'novus ante me nemo.' I have, if you will think of
+it, been the only new man who has stood for the Consulship in the
+first year in which it was legal, and who has got it." Then he goes
+on to remind them, in words which I have quoted before, that they
+had elected him by their unanimous voices. All this, he says, had
+been very grateful to him, but he had quite understood that it had
+been done that he might labor on their behalf. That such labor was
+severe, he declares. The Consulship itself must be defended. His
+period of Consulship to any Consul must be a year of grave
+responsibility, but more so to him than to any other. To him,
+should he be in doubt, the great nobles would give no kind advice.
+To him, should he be overtasked, they would give no assistance. But
+the first thing he would look for should be their good opinion. To
+declare now, before the people, that he would exercise his office
+for the good of the people was his natural duty. But in that place,
+in which it was difficult to speak after such a fashion, in the
+Senate itself, on the very first day of his Consulship, he had
+declared the same thing&mdash;"popularem me futurum esse
+consulem."<a name="FNanchor_173_173" id="FNanchor_173_173"></a><a
+href="#Footnote_173_173" class="fnanchor">173</a></p>
+
+<p>The course he had to pursue was noble, but very difficult. He
+desired, certainly, to be recognized as a friend of the people, but
+he desired so to befriend them that he might support also at the
+same time the power of the aristocracy. He still believed, as we
+cannot believe now, that there was a residuum <span class=
+'pagenum'><a name="Page_203" id="Page_203">203</a></span>of
+good in the Senate sufficient to blossom forth into new powers of
+honest government. When speaking to the oligarchs in the Senate of
+Rullus and his land law, it was easy enough to carry them with him.
+That a Consul should oppose a Tribune who was coming forward with a
+"Lex agraria" in his hands, as the latest disciple of the Gracchi,
+was not out of the common order of things. Another Consul would
+either have looked for popularity and increased power of
+plundering, as Antony might have done, or have stuck to his order,
+as he would have called it&mdash;as might have been the case with
+the Cottas, Lepiduses and Pisos of preceding years. But Cicero
+determined to oppose the demagogue Tribune by proving himself to
+the people to be more of a demagogue than he. He succeeded, and
+Rullus with his agrarian law was sent back into darkness. I regard
+the second speech against Rullus as the <i>ne plus ultra</i>, the
+very <i>beau ideal</i> of a political harangue to the people on the
+side of order and good government.</p>
+
+<p>I cannot finish this chapter, in which I have attempted to
+describe the lesser operations of Cicero's Consulship, without
+again alluding to the picture drawn by Virgil of a great man
+quelling the storms of a seditious rising by the gravity of his
+presence and the weight of his words.<a name="FNanchor_174_174" id=
+"FNanchor_174_174"></a><a href="#Footnote_174_174" class=
+"fnanchor">174</a> The poet surely had in his memory some
+occasion in which had taken place this great triumph of character
+and intellect combined. When the knights, during Cicero's
+Consulship essayed to take their privileged places in the public
+theatre, in accordance with a law passed by Roscius Otho a few
+years earlier (<span class="smcap">b.c.</span> 68), the founder of
+the obnoxious law himself entered the building. The people, enraged
+against a man who had interfered with them and their pleasures, and
+who had brought them, as it were under new restraints from the
+aristocracy, arose in a body and began to break everything that
+came to hand. "Tum pietate gravem!" The Consul was sent for. He
+called on the people to <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_204"
+id="Page_204">204</a></span>follow him out of the theatre to
+the Temple of Bellona, and there addressed to them that wonderful
+oration by which they were sent away not only pacified but in
+good-humor with Otho himself. "Iste regit dictis animos et pectora
+mulcet." I have spoken of Pliny's eulogy as to the great Consul's
+doings of the year. The passage is short and I will translate it:<a
+name="FNanchor_175_175" id="FNanchor_175_175"></a><a href=
+"#Footnote_175_175" class="fnanchor">175</a> "But, Marcus
+Tullius, how shall I reconcile it to myself to be silent as to you,
+or by what special glory shall I best declare your excellence? How
+better than by referring to the grand testimony given to you by the
+whole nation, and to the achievements of your Consulship as a
+specimen of your entire life? At your voice the tribes gave up
+their agrarian law, which was as the very bread in their mouths. At
+your persuasion they pardoned Otho his law and bore with good-humor
+the difference of the seats assigned to them. At your prayer the
+children of the proscribed forbore from demanding their rights of
+citizenship. Catiline was put to flight by your skill and
+eloquence. It was you who silenced<a name="FNanchor_176_176" id=
+"FNanchor_176_176"></a><a href="#Footnote_176_176" class=
+"fnanchor">176</a> M. Antony. Hail, thou who wert first addressed
+as the father of your country&mdash;the first who, in the garb of
+peace, hast deserved a triumph and won the laurel wreath of
+eloquence." This was grand praise to be spoken of a man more than a
+hundred years after his death, by one who had no peculiar
+sympathies with him other than those created by literary
+affinity.</p>
+
+<p>None of Cicero's letters have come to us from the year of his
+Consulship.</p>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_205" id="Page_205">
+205</a></span></p>
+
+<h3><a name="CHAPTER_IX" id="CHAPTER_IX"></a><span class="smcap">Chapter IX</span></h3>
+
+<h4><i>CATILINE.</i></h4>
+
+<p>To wash the blackamoor white has been the favorite task of some
+modern historians. To find a paradox in character is a relief to
+the investigating mind which does not care to walk always in the
+well-tried paths, or to follow the grooves made plain and
+uninteresting by earlier writers. Tiberius and even Nero have been
+praised. The memories of our early years have been shocked by
+instructions to regard Richard III. and Henry VIII. as great and
+scrupulous kings. The devil may have been painted blacker than he
+should be, and the minds of just men, who will not accept the
+verdict of the majority, have been much exercised to put the matter
+right. We are now told that Catiline was a popular hero; that,
+though he might have wished to murder Cicero, he was, in accordance
+with the practice of his days, not much to be blamed for that; and
+that he was simply the follower of the Gracchi, and the forerunner
+of C&aelig;sar in his desire to oppose the oligarchy of Rome.<a
+name="FNanchor_177_177" id="FNanchor_177_177"></a><a href=
+"#Footnote_177_177" class="fnanchor">177</a> In this there is
+much that is true. Murder was common. He who had seen the Sullan
+proscriptions, as both Catiline and Cicero had done, might well
+have learned to feel less scrupulous as to blood than we do in
+these days. Even Cicero, who of all the Romans was the most
+humane&mdash;even he, no doubt, would have been well contented that
+Catiline should have been destroyed by the people.<a name=
+"FNanchor_178_178" id="FNanchor_178_178"></a><a href=
+"#Footnote_178_178" class="fnanchor">178</a> Even he was the
+cause, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_206" id="Page_206">
+206</a></span>as we shall see just now, of the execution of the leaders of
+the conspirators whom Catiline left behind him in the city&mdash;an
+execution of which the legality is at any rate very doubtful. But
+in judging even of bloodshed we have to regard the circumstances of
+the time in the verdicts we give. Our consciousness of altered
+manners and of the growth of gentleness force this upon us. We
+cannot execrate the conspirators who murdered C&aelig;sar as we
+would do those who might now plot the death of a tyrant; nor can we
+deal as heavily with the murderers of C&aelig;sar as we would have
+done then with Catilinarian conspirators in Rome, had Catiline's
+conspiracy succeeded. And so, too, in acknowledging that Catiline
+was the outcome of the Gracchi, and to some extent the preparation
+for C&aelig;sar, we must again compare him with them, his motives
+and designs with theirs, before we can allow ourselves to
+sympathize with him, because there was much in them worthy of
+praise and honor.</p>
+
+<p>That the Gracchi were seditious no historian has, I think,
+denied. They were willing to use the usages and laws of the
+Republic where those usages and laws assisted them, but as willing
+to act illegally when the usages and laws ran counter to them. In
+the reforms or changes which they attempted they were undoubtedly
+rebels; but no reader comes across the tale of the death, first of
+one and then of the other, without a regret. It has to be owned
+that they were murdered in tumults which they themselves had
+occasioned. But they were honest and patriotic. History has
+declared of them that their efforts were made with the real purport
+of relieving their fellow-countrymen from what they believed to be
+the tyranny of oligarchs. The Republic even in their time had
+become too rotten to be saved; but the world has not the less given
+them the credit for a desire to do good; and the names of the two
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_207" id="Page_207">
+207</a></span>brothers, rebels as they were, have come down to us
+with a sweet savor about them. C&aelig;sar, on the other hand, was
+no doubt of the same political party. He too was opposed to the
+oligarchs, but it never occurred to him that he could save the
+Republic by any struggles after freedom. His mind was not given to
+patriotism of that sort&mdash;not to memories, not to associations.
+Even laws were nothing to him but as they might be useful. To his
+thinking, probably even in his early days, the state of Rome
+required a master. Its wealth, its pleasures, its soldiers, its
+power, were there for any one to take who could take them&mdash;for
+any one to hold who could hold them. Mr. Beesly, the last defender
+of Catiline, has stated that very little was known in Rome of
+C&aelig;sar till the time of Catiline's conspiracy, and in that I
+agree with him. He possessed high family rank, and had been
+Qu&aelig;stor and &AElig;dile; but it was only from this year out that his
+name was much in men's mouths, and that he was learning to look
+into things. It may be that he had previously been in league with
+Catiline&mdash;that he was in league with him till the time came
+for the great attempt. The evidence, as far as it goes, seems to
+show that it was so. Rome had been the prey of many conspiracies.
+The dominion of Marius and the dominion of Sulla had been effected
+by conspiracies. No doubt the opinion was strong with many that
+both C&aelig;sar and Crassus, the rich man, were concerned with
+Catiline. But C&aelig;sar was very far-seeing, and, if such
+connection existed, knew how to withdraw from it when the time was
+not found to be opportune. But from first to last he always was
+opposed to the oligarchy. The various steps from the Gracchi to him
+were as those which had to be made from the Girondists to Napoleon.
+Catiline, no doubt, was one of the steps, as were Danton and
+Robespierre steps. The continuation of steps in each case was at
+first occasioned by the bad government and greed of a few men in
+power. But as Robespierre was vile and low, whereas Vergniaud was
+honest and Napoleon great, so was it with Catiline <span class=
+'pagenum'><a name="Page_208" id="Page_208">
+208</a></span>between the Gracchi and C&aelig;sar. There is, to my
+thinking, no excuse for Catiline in the fact that he was a natural
+step, not even though he were a necessary step, between the Gracchi
+and C&aelig;sar.</p>
+
+<p>I regard as futile the attempts which are made to rewrite
+history on the base of moral convictions and philosophical
+conclusion. History very often has been, and no doubt often again
+will be, rewritten, with good effect and in the service of truth,
+on the finding of new facts. Records have been brought to light
+which have hitherto been buried, and testimonies are compared with
+testimonies which have not before been seen together. But to
+imagine that a man may have been good who has lain under the ban of
+all the historians, all the poets, and all the tellers of
+anecdotes, and then to declare such goodness simply in accordance
+with the dictates of a generous heart or a contradictory spirit, is
+to disturb rather than to assist history. Of Catiline we at least
+know that he headed a sedition in Rome in the year of Cicero's
+Consulship; that he left the city suddenly; that he was killed in
+the neighborhood of Pistoia fighting against the Generals of the
+Republic, and that he left certain accomplices in Rome who were put
+to death by an edict of the Senate. So much I think is certain to
+the most truculent doubter. From his contemporaries, Sallust and
+Cicero, we have a very strongly expressed opinion of his character.
+They have left to us denunciations of the man which have made him
+odious to all after-ages, so that modern poets have made him a
+stock character, and have dramatized him as a fiend. Voltaire has
+described him as calling upon his fellow-conspirators to murder
+Cicero and Cato, and to burn the city. Ben Jonson makes Catiline
+kill a slave and mix his blood, to be drained by his friends.
+"There cannot be a fitter drink to make this sanction in." The
+friends of Catiline will say that this shows no evidence against
+the man. None, certainly; but it is a continued expression of the
+feeling that has prevailed since Catiline's time. In his own age
+Cicero and Sallust, who <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_209"
+id="Page_209">209</a></span>were opposed in all their
+political views, combined to speak ill of him. In the next, Virgil
+makes him as suffering his punishment in hell.<a name=
+"FNanchor_179_179" id="FNanchor_179_179"></a><a href=
+"#Footnote_179_179" class="fnanchor">179</a> In the next,
+Velleius Paterculus speaks of him as the conspirator whom Cicero
+had banished.<a name="FNanchor_180_180" id=
+"FNanchor_180_180"></a><a href="#Footnote_180_180" class=
+"fnanchor">180</a> Juvenal makes various allusions to him, but
+all in the same spirit. Juvenal cared nothing for history, but used
+the names of well-known persons as illustrations of the idea which
+he was presenting.<a name="FNanchor_181_181" id=
+"FNanchor_181_181"></a><a href="#Footnote_181_181" class=
+"fnanchor">181</a> Valerius Maximus, who wrote commendable little
+essays about all the virtues and all the vices, which he
+illustrated with the names of all the vicious and all the virtuous
+people he knew, is very severe on Catiline.<a name=
+"FNanchor_182_182" id="FNanchor_182_182"></a><a href=
+"#Footnote_182_182" class="fnanchor">182</a> Florus, who wrote
+two centuries and a half after the conspiracy, gives us of Catiline
+the same personal story as that told both by Sallust and Cicero:
+"Debauchery, in the first place; and then the poverty which that
+had produced; and then the opportunity of the time, because the
+Roman armies were in distant lands, induced Catiline to conspire
+for the destruction of his country."<a name="FNanchor_183_183" id=
+"FNanchor_183_183"></a><a href="#Footnote_183_183" class=
+"fnanchor">183</a> Mommsen, who was certainly biassed by no
+feeling in favor of Cicero, declares that Catiline in particular
+was "one of the most nefarious men in that nefarious age. His
+villanies belong to the criminal records, not to history."<a name=
+"FNanchor_184_184" id="FNanchor_184_184"></a><a href=
+"#Footnote_184_184" class="fnanchor">184</a> All this is no
+evidence. Cicero and Sallust may possibly have combined to lie
+about Catiline. Other Roman writers may have followed them, and
+modern <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_210" id="Page_210">
+210</a></span>poets and modern historians may have followed the
+Roman writers. It is possible that the world may have been wrong as
+to a period of Roman history with which it has thought itself to be
+well acquainted; but the world now has nothing to go by but the
+facts as they have come down to it. The writers of the ages since
+have combined to speak of Cicero with respect and admiration. They
+have combined, also, to speak of Catiline with abhorrence. They
+have agreed, also, to treat those other rebels, the Gracchi, after
+such a fashion that, in spite of their sedition, a sweet savor, as
+I have said, attaches itself to their names. For myself, I am
+contented to take the opinion of the world, and feel assured that I
+shall do no injustice in speaking of Catiline as all who have
+written about him hitherto have spoken of him I cannot consent to
+the building up of a noble patriot out of such materials as we have
+concerning him.<a name="FNanchor_185_185" id=
+"FNanchor_185_185"></a><a href="#Footnote_185_185" class=
+"fnanchor">185</a></p>
+
+<p>Two strong points have been made for Catiline in Mr. <span
+class='pagenum'><a name="Page_211" id="Page_211">
+211</a></span>Beesly's defence. His ancestors had been Consuls
+when the forefathers of patricians of a later date "were clapping
+their chapped hands and throwing up their sweaty nightcaps." That
+scorn against the people should be expressed by the aristocrat
+Casca was well supposed by Shakspeare; but how did a liberal of the
+present day bring himself to do honor to his hero by such
+allusions? In truth, however, the glory of <span class='pagenum'><a
+name="Page_212" id="Page_212">212</a></span>ancient blood and
+the disgrace attaching to the signs of labor are ideas seldom
+relinquished even by democratic minds. A Howard is nowhere lovelier
+than in America, or a sweaty nightcap less relished. We are then
+reminded how Catiline died fighting, with the wounds all in front;
+and are told that the "world has generally a generous word for the
+memory of a brave man dying for his cause, be that cause what it
+will; but for Catiline none!" I think there is a mistake in the
+sentiment expressed here. To die readily when death must come is
+but a little thing, and is done daily by the poorest of mankind.
+The Romans could generally do it, and so can the Chinese. A Zulu is
+quite equal to it, and people lower in civilization than Chinese or
+Zulus. To encounter death, or the danger of death, for the sake of
+duty&mdash;when the choice is there; but duty and death are
+preferred to ignominious security, or, better still, to security
+which shall bring with it self-abasement&mdash;that is grand. When
+I hear that a man "rushed into the field and, foremost fighting,
+fell," if there have been no adequate occasion, I think him a fool.
+If it be that he has chosen to hurry on the necessary event, as was
+Catiline's case, I recognize him as having been endowed with
+certain physical attributes which are neither glorious nor
+disgraceful. That Catiline was constitutionally a brave man no one
+has denied. Rush, the murderer, was one of the bravest men of whom
+I remember to have heard. What credit is due to Rush is due to
+Catiline.</p>
+
+<p>What we believe to be the story of Catiline's life is this: In
+Sulla's time he was engaged, as behooved a great nobleman of
+ancient blood, in carrying out the Dictator's proscriptions and in
+running through whatever means he had. There are fearful stories
+told of him as to murdering his own son and other relatives; as to
+which Mr. Beesly is no doubt right in saying that such tales were
+too lightly told in Rome to deserve implicit confidence. To serve a
+purpose any one would say anything of any enemy. Very marvellous
+qualities are attributed to him&mdash;as to having been at the same
+time steeped in luxury and yet able and willing to bear all bodily
+hardships. He probably had been engaged in murders&mdash;as how
+should a man not have been so who had served under Sulla during the
+Dictatorship? He had probably allured some young aristocrats into
+debauchery, when all young aristocrats were so allured. He had
+probably undergone some extremity of cold and hunger. In reading of
+these things the reader will know by instinct how much he may
+believe, and how much he should receive as mythic. That he was a
+fast young nobleman, brought up to know no scruples, to disregard
+blood, and to look upon his country as a milch cow from which a
+young nobleman might be fed with never-ending streams of rich cream
+in the shape of money to be borrowed, wealth to be snatched, and,
+above all, foreigners to be plundered, we may take, I think, as
+proved. In spite of his vices, or by aid of them, he rose in the
+service of his country. That such a one should become a Pr&aelig;tor and
+a Governor was natural. He went to Africa with proconsular
+authority, and of course fleeced the Africans. It was as natural as
+that a flock of sheep should lose their wool at shearing time. He
+came back intent, as was natural also, on being a Consul, and of
+carrying on the game of promotion and of plunder. But there came a
+spoke in his wheel&mdash;the not unusual spoke of an accusation
+from the province. While under accusation for provincial robbery he
+could not come forward as a candidate, and thus he was stopped in
+his career.</p>
+
+<p>It is not possible now to unravel all the personal feuds of
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_213" id="Page_213">
+213</a></span>the time&mdash;the ins and outs of family quarrels.
+Clodius&mdash;the Clodius who was afterward Cicero's notorious
+enemy and the victim of Milo's fury&mdash;became the accuser of
+Catiline on behalf of the Africans. Though Clodius was much the
+younger, they were men of the same class. It may be possible that
+Clodius was appointed to the work&mdash;as it had been intended
+that C&aelig;cilius should be appointed at the prosecution of
+Verres&mdash;in order to assure not the conviction but the
+acquittal of the guilty man. The historians and biographers say
+that Clodius was at last bought by a bribe, and that he betrayed
+the Africans after that fashion. It may be that such bribery was
+arranged from the first. Our interest in that trial lies in the
+fact that Cicero no doubt intended, from political motives, to
+defend Catiline. It has been said that he did do so. As far as we
+know, he abandoned the intention. We have no trace of his speech,
+and no allusion in history to an occurrence which would certainly
+have been mentioned.<a name="FNanchor_186_186" id=
+"FNanchor_186_186"></a><a href="#Footnote_186_186" class=
+"fnanchor">186</a> But there was <i>no</i> reason why he should
+not have done so. He defended Fonteius, and I am quite willing to
+own that he knew Fonteius to have been a robber. When I look at the
+practice of our own times, I find that thieves and rebels are
+defended by honorable advocates, who do not scruple to take their
+briefs in opposition to their own opinions. It suited Cicero to do
+the same. If I were detected in a plot for blowing up a Cabinet
+Council, I do not doubt but that I should get the late
+attorney-general to defend me.<a name="FNanchor_187_187" id=
+"FNanchor_187_187"></a><a href="#Footnote_187_187" class=
+"fnanchor">187</a></p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_214" id="Page_214">
+214</a></span>But Catiline, though he was acquitted, was balked in
+his candidature for the Consulship of the next year, <span class=
+"smcap">b.c.</span> 65. P. Sulla and Autronius were
+elected<a name="FNanchor_188_188" id=
+"FNanchor_188_188"></a><a href="#Footnote_188_188" class=
+"fnanchor">188</a>&mdash;that Sulla to whose subsequent defence I have just
+referred in this note&mdash;but were ejected on the score of
+bribery, and two others, Torquatus and Cotta, were elected in their
+place. In this way three men standing on high before their
+countrymen&mdash;one having been debarred from standing for the
+Consulship, and the other two having been robbed of their prize
+even when it was within their grasp&mdash;not unnaturally became
+traitors at heart. Almost as naturally they came together and
+conspired. Why should they have been selected as victims, having
+only done that which every aristocrat did as a matter of course in
+following out his recognized profession in living upon the subject
+nations? Their conduct had probably been the same as that of
+others, or if more glaring, only so much so as is always the case
+with vices as they become more common. However, the three men fell,
+and became the centre of a plot which is known as the first
+Catiline conspiracy.</p>
+
+<p>The reader must bear in mind that I am now telling the story of
+Catiline, and going back to a period of two years before Cicero's
+Consulship, which was <span class="smcap">b.c.</span> 63. How
+during <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_215" id="Page_215">
+215</a></span>that year Cicero successfully defended Murena when
+Cato endeavored to rob him of his coming Consulship, has been
+already told. It may be that Murena's hands were no cleaner than
+those of Sulla and Autronius, and that they lacked only the
+consular authority and forensic eloquence of the advocate who
+defended Murena. At this time, when the two appointed Consuls were
+rejected, Cicero had hardly as yet taken any part in public
+politics. He had been Qu&aelig;stor, &AElig;dile, and Pr&aelig;tor, filling those
+administrative offices to the best of his ability. He had, he says,
+hardly heard of the first conspiracy.<a name="FNanchor_189_189" id=
+"FNanchor_189_189"></a><a href="#Footnote_189_189" class=
+"fnanchor">189</a> That what he says is true, is, I think, proved
+by the absence of all allusion to it in his early letters, or in
+the speeches or fragments of speeches that are extant. But that
+there was such a conspiracy we cannot doubt, nor that the three men
+named, Catiline, Sulla, and Autronius, were leaders in it. What
+would interest us, if only we could have the truth, is whether
+C&aelig;sar and Crassus were joined in it.</p>
+
+<p>It is necessary again to consider the condition of the Republic.
+To us a conspiracy to subvert the government under which the
+conspirer lives seems either a very terrible remedy for great
+evils, or an attempt to do evil which all good men should oppose.
+We have the happy conspiracy in which Washington became the
+military leader, and the French Revolution, which, bloody as it
+was, succeeded in rescuing Frenchmen from the condition of serfdom.
+At home we have our own conspiracy against the Stuart royalty,
+which had also noble results. The Gracchi had attempted to effect
+something of the same kind at Rome; but the moral condition of the
+people had become so low that no real love of liberty remained.
+Conspiracy! oh yes. As long as there was anything to get, of course
+he who had not got it would conspire <span class='pagenum'><a name=
+"Page_216" id="Page_216">216</a></span>against him who had.
+There had been conspiracies for and against Marius, for and against
+Cinna, for and against Sulla. There was a grasping for plunder, a
+thirst for power which meant luxury, a greed for blood which grew
+from the hatred which such rivalry produced. These were the motive
+causes for conspiracies; not whether Romans should be free but
+whether a Sulla or a Cotta should be allowed to run riot in a
+province.</p>
+
+<p>C&aelig;sar at this time had not done much in the Roman world
+except fall greatly into debt. Knowing, as we do know now, his
+immense intellectual capacity, we cannot doubt but at the age he
+had now reached, thirty-five, <span class="smcap">b.c.</span> 65,
+he had considered deeply his prospects in life. There is no reason
+for supposing that he had conceived the idea of being a great
+soldier. That came to him by pure accident, some years afterward.
+To be Qu&aelig;stor, Pr&aelig;tor, and Consul, and catch what was going,
+seems to have been the cause to him of having encountered
+extraordinary debt. That he would have been a Verres, or a
+Fonteius, or a Catiline, we certainly are not entitled to think.
+Over whatever people he might have come to reign, and in whatever
+way he might have procured his kingdom, he would have reigned with
+a far-seeing eye, fixed upon future results. At this period he was
+looking out for a way to advance himself. There were three men, all
+just six years his senior, who had risen or were rising into great
+repute; they were Pompey, Cicero, and Catiline. There were two who
+were noted for having clean hands in the midst of all the dirt
+around; and they were undoubtedly the first Romans of the day.
+Catiline was determined that he too would be among the first Romans
+of the day; but his hands had never been clean. Which was the
+better way for such a one as C&aelig;sar to go?</p>
+
+<p>To have had Pompey under his feet, or Cicero, must have then
+seemed to C&aelig;sar to be impracticable, though the time came
+when he did, in different ways, have his feet on both. With
+Catiline the chance of success might be better. Crassus <span
+class='pagenum'><a name="Page_217" id="Page_217">
+217</a></span>he had already compassed. Crassus was like M.
+Poirier in the play&mdash;a man who, having become rich, then
+allowed himself the luxury of an ambition. If C&aelig;sar joined
+the plot we can well understand that Crassus should have gone with
+him. We have all but sufficient authority for saying that it was
+so, but authority insufficient for declaring it. That Sallust, in
+his short account of the first conspiracy, should not have
+implicated C&aelig;sar was a matter of course,<a name=
+"FNanchor_190_190" id="FNanchor_190_190"></a><a href=
+"#Footnote_190_190" class="fnanchor">190</a> as he wrote
+altogether in C&aelig;sar's interest. That Cicero should not have
+mentioned it is also quite intelligible. He did not wish to pull
+down upon his ears the whole house of the aristocracy. Throughout
+his career it was his object to maintain the tenor of the law with
+what smallest breach of it might be possible; but he was wise
+enough to know that when the laws were being broken on every side
+he could not catch in his nets all those who broke them. He had to
+pass over much; to make the best of the state of things as he found
+them. It is not to be supposed that a conspirator against the
+Republic would be horrible to him, as would be to us a traitor
+against the Crown: there were too many of them for horror. If
+C&aelig;sar and Crassus could be got to keep themselves quiet, he
+would be willing enough not to have to add them to his list of
+enemies. Livy is presumed to have told us that this conspiracy
+intended to restore the ejected Consuls, and to kill the Consuls
+who had been established in their place. But the book in which this
+was written is lost, and we have only the Epitome, or heading of
+the book, of which we know that it was not written by Livy.<a name=
+"FNanchor_191_191" id="FNanchor_191_191"></a><a href=
+"#Footnote_191_191" class="fnanchor">191</a> Suetonius, who got
+his story not improbably from Livy, tells us that C&aelig;sar was
+suspected of having joined this conspiracy with Crassus;<a name=
+"FNanchor_192_192" id="FNanchor_192_192"></a><a href=
+"#Footnote_192_192" class="fnanchor">192</a> and he goes on to
+say that Cicero, writing subsequently to one Axius, declared that
+"C&aelig;sar had attempted in his Consulship to accomplish the
+dominion which he had intended to grasp in his &AElig;dileship" <span
+class='pagenum'><a name="Page_218" id="Page_218">
+218</a></span>the year in question. There is, however, no such
+letter extant. Asconius, who, as I have said before, wrote in the
+time of Tiberius, declares that Cicero in his lost oration, "In
+toga candida," accused Crassus of having been the author of the
+conspiracy. Such is the information we have; and if we elect to
+believe that C&aelig;sar was then joined with Catiline, we must be
+guided by our ideas of probability rather than by evidence.<a name=
+"FNanchor_193_193" id="FNanchor_193_193"></a><a href=
+"#Footnote_193_193" class="fnanchor">193</a> As I have said
+before, conspiracies had been very rife. To C&aelig;sar it was no
+doubt becoming manifest that the Republic, with its oligarchs, must
+fall. Subsequently it did fall, and he was&mdash;I will not say the
+conspirator, nor will I judge the question by saying that he was
+the traitor; but the man of power who, having the legions of the
+Republic in his hands, used them against the Republic. I can well
+understand that he should have joined such a conspiracy as this
+first of Catiline, and then have backed out of it when he found he
+could not trust those who were joined with him.</p>
+
+<p>This conspiracy failed. One man omitted to give a signal at one
+time, and another at another. The Senate was to have been
+slaughtered; the two Consuls, Cotta and Torquatus, murdered, and
+the two ex-Consuls, Sulla and Autronius, replaced. Though all the
+details seem to have been known to the Consuls, Catiline was
+allowed to go free, nor were any steps taken for the punishment of
+the conspirators.</p>
+
+<p>The second conspiracy was attempted in the Consulship of Cicero,
+<span class="smcap">b.c.</span> 63, two years after the first.
+Catiline had struggled for the Consulship, and had failed. Again
+there would be no province, no plunder, no power. This
+interference, as it must have seemed to him, with his peculiar
+privileges, had all come from Cicero. Cicero was the busybody who
+was attempting to stop the order of things <span class='pagenum'><a
+name="Page_219" id="Page_219">219</a></span>which had, to his
+thinking, been specially ordained by all the gods for the
+sustenance of one so well born, and at the same time so poor, as
+himself. There was a vulgar meddling about it&mdash;all coming from
+the violent virtue of a Consul whose father had been a nobody at
+Arpinum&mdash;which was well calculated to drive Catiline into
+madness. So he went to work and got together in Rome a body of men
+as discontented and almost as nobly born as himself, and in the
+country north of Rome an army of rebels, and began his operations
+with very little secrecy. In all the story the most remarkable
+feature is the openness with which many of the details of the
+conspiracy were carried on. The existence of the rebel army was
+known; it was known that Catiline was the leader; the causes of his
+disaffection were known; his comrades in guilt were known When any
+special act was intended, such as might be the murder of the Consul
+or the firing of the city, secret plots were concocted in
+abundance. But the grand fact of a wide-spread conspiracy could go
+naked in Rome, and not even a Cicero dare to meddle with it.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote"><span class="smcap">b.c.</span> 63,
+&aelig;tat 44</div>
+
+<p>As to this second conspiracy, the conspiracy with which Sallust
+and Cicero have made us so well acquainted, there is no sufficient
+ground for asserting that C&aelig;sar was concerned in it.<a name=
+"FNanchor_194_194" id="FNanchor_194_194"></a><a href=
+"#Footnote_194_194" class="fnanchor">194</a> That he was greatly
+concerned in the treatment of the conspirators there is no doubt.
+He had probably learned to appreciate the rage, the madness, the
+impotence of Catiline at their proper worth. He too, I think, must
+have looked upon Cicero as a meddling, over-virtuous busybody; as
+did even Pompey when he returned from the East. What practical use
+could there be in such a man at such a time&mdash;in one who really
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_220" id="Page_220">
+220</a></span>believed in honesty, who thought of liberty and the
+Republic, and imagined that he could set the world right by
+talking? Such must have been the feeling of C&aelig;sar, who had
+both experience and foresight to tell him that Rome wanted and must
+have a master. He probably had patriotism enough to feel that he,
+if he could acquire the mastership, would do something beyond
+robbery&mdash;would not satisfy himself with cutting the throats of
+all his enemies, and feeding his supporters with the property of
+his opponents. But Cicero was impracticable&mdash;unless, indeed,
+he could be so flattered as to be made useful. It was thus, I
+think, that C&aelig;sar regarded Cicero, and thus that he induced
+Pompey to regard him. But now, in the year of his Consulship,
+Cicero had really talked himself into power, and for this year his
+virtue must be allowed to have its full way.</p>
+
+<p>He did so much in this year, was so really efficacious in
+restraining for a time the greed and violence of the aristocracy,
+that it is not surprising that he was taught to believe in himself.
+There were, too, enough of others anxious for the Republic to
+bolster him up in his own belief. There was that Cornelius in whose
+defence Cicero made the two great speeches which have been
+unfortunately lost, and there was Cato, and up to this time there
+was Pompey, as Cicero thought. Cicero, till he found himself
+candidate for the Consulship, had contented himself with
+undertaking separate cases, in which, no doubt, politics were
+concerned, but which were not exclusively political. He had
+advocated the employment of Pompey in the East, and had defended
+Cornelius. He was well acquainted with the history of the Republic;
+but he had probably never asked himself the question whether it was
+in mortal peril, and if so, whether it might possibly be saved. In
+his Consulship he did do so; and, seeing less of the Republic than
+we can see now, told himself that it was possible.</p>
+
+<p>The stories told to us of Catiline's conspiracy by Sallust and
+by Cicero are so little conflicting that we can trust them both.
+Trusting them both, we are justified in believing that <span class=
+'pagenum'><a name="Page_221" id="Page_221">221</a></span>we
+know the truth. We are here concerned only with the part which
+Cicero took. Nothing, I think, which Cicero says is contradicted by
+Sallust, though of much that Cicero certainly did Sallust is
+silent. Sallust damns him, but only by faint praise. We may,
+therefore, take the account of the plot as given by Cicero himself
+as verified: indeed, I am not aware that any of Cicero's facts have
+been questioned.</p>
+
+<p>Sallust declares that Catiline's attempt was popular in Rome
+generally.<a name="FNanchor_195_195" id="FNanchor_195_195"></a><a
+href="#Footnote_195_195" class="fnanchor">195</a> This, I think,
+must be taken as showing simply that revolution and conspiracy were
+in themselves popular: that, as a condition of things around him
+such as existed in Rome, a plotter of state plots should be able to
+collect a body of followers, was a thing of course; that there were
+many citizens who would not work, and who expected to live in
+luxury on public or private plunder, is certain. When the
+conspiracy was first announced in the Senate, Catiline had an army
+collected; but we have no proof that the hearts of the inhabitants
+of Rome generally were with the conspirators. On the other hand, we
+have proof, in the unparalleled devotion shown by the citizens to
+Cicero after the conspiracy was quelled, that their hearts were
+with him. The populace, fond of change, liked a disturbance; but
+there is nothing to show that Catiline was ever beloved as had been
+the Gracchi, and other tribunes of the people who came after
+them.</p>
+
+<p>Catiline, in the autumn of the year <span class=
+"smcap">b.c.</span> 63, had arranged the outside circumstances of
+his conspiracy, knowing that he would, for the third time, be
+unsuccessful in his canvass for the Consulship. That Cicero with
+other Senators should be murdered seems to have been their first
+object, and that then the Consulship should be seized by force. On
+the 21st of <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_222" id=
+"Page_222">222</a></span>October Cicero made his first report
+to the Senate as to the conspiracy, and called upon Catiline for
+his answer. It was then that Catiline made his famous reply: "That
+the Republic had two bodies, of which one was weak and had a bad
+head"&mdash;meaning the aristocracy, with Cicero as its
+chief&mdash;"and the other strong, but without any head," meaning
+the people; "but that as for himself, so well had the people
+deserved of him, that as long as he lived a head should be
+forth-coming."<a name="FNanchor_196_196" id=
+"FNanchor_196_196"></a><a href="#Footnote_196_196" class=
+"fnanchor">196</a> Then, at that sitting, the Senate decreed, in
+the usual formula, "That the Consuls were to take care that the
+Republic did not suffer.<a name="FNanchor_197_197" id=
+"FNanchor_197_197"></a><a href="#Footnote_197_197" class=
+"fnanchor">197</a> On the 22d of October, the new Consuls,
+Silanus and Murena, were elected. On the 23d, Catiline was
+regularly accused of conspiracy by Paulus Lepidus, a young
+nobleman, in conformity with a law which had been enacted
+fifty-five years earlier, "de vi publica," as to violence applied
+to the State. Two days afterward it was officially reported that
+Manlius&mdash;or Mallius, as he seems to have been generally
+called&mdash;Catiline's lieutenant, had openly taken up arms in
+Etruria. The 27th had been fixed by the conspirators for the murder
+of Cicero and the other Senators. That all this was to be, and was
+so arranged by Catiline, had been declared in the Senate by Cicero
+himself on that day when Catiline told them of the two bodies and
+the two heads. Cicero, with his intelligence, ingenuity, and
+industry, had learned every detail. There was one Curius among the
+conspirators, a fair specimen of the young Roman nobleman of the
+day, who told it all to his mistress Fulvia, and she carried the
+information to the Consul. It is all narrated with fair dramatic
+accuracy in Ben Jonson's dull play, though he has attributed to
+C&aelig;sar a share in the plot, for doing which he had no
+authority. Cicero, on that sitting in the Senate, had been
+specially anxious to make Catiline understand that he knew
+privately every circumstance of the <span class='pagenum'><a name=
+"Page_223" id="Page_223">223</a></span>plot. Throughout the
+whole conspiracy his object was not to take Catiline, but to drive
+him out of Rome. If the people could be stirred up to kill him in
+their wrath, that might be well; in that way there might be an end
+of all the trouble. But if that did not come to pass, then it would
+be best to make the city unbearable to the conspirators. If they
+could be driven out, they must either take themselves to foreign
+parts and be dispersed, or must else fight and assuredly be
+conquered. Cicero himself was never blood-thirsty, but the
+necessity was strong upon him of ridding the Republic from these
+blood-thirsty men.</p>
+
+<p>The scheme for destroying Cicero and the Senators on the 27th of
+October had proved abortive. On the 6th of the next month a meeting
+was held in the house of one Marcus Porcius L&aelig;ca, at which a plot
+was arranged for the killing of Cicero the next day&mdash;for the
+killing of Cicero alone&mdash;he having been by this time found to
+be the one great obstacle in their path. Two knights were told off
+for the service, named Vargunteius and Cornelius. These, after the
+Roman fashion, were to make their way early on the following
+morning into the Consul's bedroom for the ostensible purpose of
+paying him their morning compliments, but, when there, they were to
+slay him. All this, however, was told to Cicero, and the two
+knights, when they came, were refused admittance. If Cicero had
+been a man given to fear, as has been said of him, he must have
+passed a wretched life at this period. As far as I can judge of his
+words and doings throughout his life, he was not harassed by
+constitutional timidity. He feared to disgrace his name, to lower
+his authority, to become small in the eyes of men, to make
+political mistakes, to do that which might turn against him. In
+much of this there was a falling off from that dignity which, if we
+do not often find it in a man, we can all of us imagine; but of
+personal dread as to his own skin, as to his own life, there was
+very little. At this time, when, as he knew well, many men with
+many weapons in their hands, men <span class='pagenum'><a name=
+"Page_224" id="Page_224">224</a></span>who were altogether
+unscrupulous, were in search for his blood he never seems to have
+trembled.</p>
+
+<p>But all Rome trembled&mdash;even according to Sallust. I have
+already shown how he declares in one part of his narrative that the
+common people as a body were with Catiline, and have attempted to
+explain what was meant by that expression. In another, in an
+earlier chapter, he says "that the State," meaning the city, "was
+disturbed by all this, and its appearance changed.<a name=
+"FNanchor_198_198" id="FNanchor_198_198"></a><a href=
+"#Footnote_198_198" class="fnanchor">198</a> Instead of the joy
+and ease which had lately prevailed, the effect of the long peace,
+a sudden sadness fell upon every one." I quote the passage because
+that other passage has been taken as proving the popularity of
+Catiline. There can, I think, be no doubt that the population of
+Rome was, as a body, afraid of Catiline. The city was to be burnt
+down, the Consuls and the Senate were to be murdered, debts were to
+be wiped out, slaves were probably to be encouraged against their
+masters. The "permota civitas" and the "cuncta plebes," of which
+Sallust speaks, mean that all the "householders" were disturbed,
+and that all the "roughs" were eager with revolutionary hopes.</p>
+
+<p>On the 8th of November, the day after that on which the Consul
+was to have been murdered in his own house, he called a special
+meeting of the Senate in the temple of Jupiter Stator. The Senate
+in Cicero's time was convened according to expedience, or perhaps
+as to the dignity of the occasion, in various temples. Of these
+none had a higher reputation than that of the special Jupiter who
+is held to have befriended Romulus in his fight with the Sabines.
+Here was launched that thunderbolt of eloquence which all English
+school-boys have known for its "Quousque tandem abutere, Catilina,
+patientia nostra." Whether it be from the awe which has come down
+to me from my earliest years, mixed perhaps with something of dread
+for the great pedagogue who first made the words to sound grandly
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_225" id="Page_225">
+225</a></span>in my ears, or whether true critical judgment has
+since approved to me the real weight of the words, they certainly
+do contain for my intelligence an expression of almost divine
+indignation. Then there follows a string of questions, which to
+translate would be vain, which to quote, for those who read the
+language, is surely unnecessary. It is said to have been a fault
+with Cicero that in his speeches he runs too much into that vein of
+wrathful interrogation which undoubtedly palls upon us in English
+oratory when frequent resort is made to it. It seems to be too
+easy, and to contain too little of argument. It was this, probably,
+of which his contemporaries complained when they declared him to be
+florid, redundant, and Asiatic in his style.<a name=
+"FNanchor_199_199" id="FNanchor_199_199"></a><a href=
+"#Footnote_199_199" class="fnanchor">199</a> This questioning
+runs through nearly the whole speech, but the reader cannot fail to
+acknowledge its efficacy in reference to the matter in hand.
+Catiline was sitting there himself in the Senate, and the questions
+were for the most part addressed to him. We can see him now, a man
+of large frame, with bold, glaring eyes, looking in his wrath as
+though he were hardly able to keep his hands from the Consul's
+throat, even there in the Senate. Though he knew that this attack
+was to be made on him, he had stalked into the temple and seated
+himself in a place of honor, among the benches intended for those
+who had been Consuls. When there, no one spoke to him, no one
+saluted him. The consular Senators shrunk away, leaving their
+places of privilege. Even his brother-conspirators, of whom many
+were present, did not dare to recognize him. Lentulus was no doubt
+there, and Cethegus, and two of the Sullan family, and Cassius
+Longinus, and Autronius, and L&aelig;ca, and Curius. All of them were or
+had been conspirators in the same cause. C&aelig;sar was there too,
+and Crassus. A fellow conspirator with Catiline would probably be a
+Senator. Cicero knew them all. We cannot say that in this matter
+C&aelig;sar <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_226" id=
+"Page_226">226</a></span>was guilty, but Cicero, no doubt,
+felt that C&aelig;sar's heart was with Catiline. It was his present
+task so to thunder with his eloquence that he should turn these
+bitter enemies into seeming friends&mdash;to drive Catiline from
+out of the midst of them, so that it should seem that he had been
+expelled by those who were in truth his brother-conspirators; and
+this it was that he did.</p>
+
+<p>He declared the nature of the plot, and boldly said that, such
+being the facts, Catiline deserved death. "If," he says, "I should
+order you to be taken and killed, believe me I should be blamed
+rather for my delay in doing so than for my cruelty." He spoke
+throughout as though all the power were in his own hands, either to
+strike or to forbear. But it was his object to drive him out and
+not to kill him. "Go," he said; "that camp of yours and Mallius,
+your lieutenant, are too long without you. Take your friends with
+you. Take them all. Cleanse the city of your presence. When its
+walls are between you and me then I shall feel myself secure. Among
+us here you may no longer stir yourself. I will not have it&mdash;I
+will not endure it. If I were to suffer you to be killed, your
+followers in the conspiracy would remain here; but if you go out,
+as I desire you, this cesspool of filth will drain itself off from
+out the city. Do you hesitate to do at my command that which you
+would fain do yourself? The Consul requires an enemy to depart from
+the city. Do you ask me whether you are to go into exile? I do not
+order it; but if you ask my counsel, I advise it." Exile was the
+severest punishment known by the Roman law, as applicable to a
+citizen, and such a punishment it was in the power of no Consul or
+other officer of state to inflict. Though he had taken upon himself
+the duty of protecting the Republic, still he could not condemn a
+citizen. It was to the moral effect of his words that he must
+trust: "Non jubeo, sed si me consulis, suadeo." Catiline heard him
+to the end, and then, muttering a curse, left the Senate, and went
+out of the city. Sallust tells us that he threatened <span class=
+'pagenum'><a name="Page_227" id="Page_227">227</a></span>to
+extinguish, in the midst of the general ruin he would create, the
+flames prepared for his own destruction. Sallust, however, was not
+present on the occasion, and the threat probably had been uttered
+at an earlier period of Catiline's career. Cicero tells us
+expressly, in one of his subsequent works, that Catiline was struck
+dumb.<a name="FNanchor_200_200" id="FNanchor_200_200"></a><a href=
+"#Footnote_200_200" class="fnanchor">200</a></p>
+
+<p>Of this first Catiline oration Sallust says, that "Marcus
+Tullius the Consul, either fearing the presence of the man, or
+stirred to anger, made a brilliant speech, very useful to the
+Republic."<a name="FNanchor_201_201" id="FNanchor_201_201"></a><a
+href="#Footnote_201_201" class="fnanchor">201</a> This, coming
+from an enemy, is stronger testimony to the truth of the story told
+by Cicero, than would have been any vehement praise from the pen of
+a friend.</p>
+
+<p>Catiline met some of his colleagues the same night. They were
+the very men who as Senators had been present at his confusion, and
+to them he declared his purpose of going. There was nothing to be
+done in the city by him. The Consul was not to be reached. Catiline
+himself was too closely watched for personal action. He would join
+the army at F&aelig;sul&aelig; and then return and burn the city. His
+friends, Lentulus, Cethegus, and the others, were to remain and be
+ready for fire and slaughter as soon as Catiline with his army
+should appear before the walls. He went, and Cicero had been so far
+successful.</p>
+
+<p>But these men, Lentulus, Cethegus, and the other Senators,
+though they had not dared to sit near Catiline in the Senate, or to
+speak a word to him, went about their work zealously when evening
+had come. A report was spread among the people that the Consul had
+taken upon himself to drive a citizen into exile. Catiline, the
+ill-used Catiline&mdash;Catiline, the friend of the people, had,
+they said, gone to Marseilles in order that he might escape the
+fury of the tyrant Consul. In this we see the jealousy of Romans as
+to the infliction of any punishment <span class='pagenum'><a name=
+"Page_228" id="Page_228">228</a></span>by an individual
+officer on a citizen. It was with a full knowledge of what was
+likely to come that Cicero had ironically declared that he only
+advised the conspirator to go. The feeling was so strong that on
+the next morning he found himself compelled to address the people
+on the subject. Then was uttered the second Catiline oration, which
+was spoken in the open air to the citizens at large. Here too there
+are words, among those with which he began his speech, almost as
+familiar to us as the "Quousque tandem"&mdash;"Abiit; excessit;
+evasit; erupit!" This Catiline, says Cicero, this pest of his
+country, raging in his madness, I have turned out of the city. If
+you like it better, I have expelled him by my very words. "He has
+departed. He has fled. He has gone out from among us. He has broken
+away!" "I have made this conspiracy plain to you all, as I said I
+would, unless indeed there may be some one here who does not
+believe that the friends of Catiline will do the same as Catiline
+would have done. But there is no time now for soft measures. We
+have to be strong-handed. There is one thing I will do for these
+men. Let them too go out, so that Catiline shall not pine for them.
+I will show them the road. He has gone by the Via Aurelia. If they
+will hurry they may catch him before night." He implies by this
+that the story about Marseilles was false. Then he speaks with
+irony of himself as that violent Consul who could drive citizens
+into exile by the very breath of his mouth. "Ego vehemens ille
+consul qui verbo cives in exsilium ejicio." So he goes on, in truth
+defending himself, but leading them with him to take part in the
+accusation which he intends to bring against the chief conspirators
+who remain in the city. If they too will go, they may go unscathed;
+if they choose to remain, let them look to themselves.</p>
+
+<p>Through it all we can see there is but one thing that he
+fears&mdash;that he shall be driven by the exigencies of the
+occasion to take some steps which shall afterward be judged not to
+have been strictly legal, and which shall put him into the <span
+class='pagenum'><a name="Page_229" id="Page_229">
+229</a></span>power of his enemies when the day of his ascendency
+shall have passed away. It crops out repeatedly in these
+speeches.<a name="FNanchor_202_202" id="FNanchor_202_202"></a><a
+href="#Footnote_202_202" class="fnanchor">202</a> He seems to be
+aware that some over-strong measure will be forced upon him for
+which he alone will be held responsible. If he can only avoid that,
+he will fear nothing else; if he cannot avoid it, he will encounter
+even that danger. His foresight was wonderfully accurate. The
+strong hand was used, and the punishment came upon him, not from
+his enemies but from his friends, almost to the bursting of his
+heart.</p>
+
+<p>Though the Senate had decreed that the Consuls were to see that
+the Republic should take no harm, and though it was presumed that
+extraordinary power was thereby conferred, it is evident that no
+power was conferred of inflicting punishment. Antony, as Cicero's
+colleague, was nothing. The authority, the responsibility, the
+action were, and were intended, to remain with Cicero. He could not
+legally banish any one. It was only too evident that there must be
+much slaughter. There was the army of rebels with which it would be
+necessary to fight. Let them go, these rebels within the city, and
+either join the army and get themselves killed, or else disappear,
+whither they would, among the provinces. The object of this second
+Catiline oration, spoken to the people, was to convince the
+remaining conspirators that they had better go, and to teach the
+citizens generally that in giving such counsel he was "banishing"
+no one. As far as the citizens were concerned he was successful;
+but he did not induce the friends of Catiline to follow their
+chief. This took place on the 9th of November. <span class=
+'pagenum'><a name="Page_230" id="Page_230">230</a></span>After
+the oration the Senate met again, and declared Catiline and Mallius
+to be public enemies.</p>
+
+<p>Twenty-four days elapsed before the third speech was
+spoken&mdash;twenty- four days during which Rome must have been in
+a state of very great fever. Cicero was actively engaged in
+unravelling the plots the details of which were still being carried
+on within the city; but nevertheless he made that speech for Murena
+before the judicial bench of which I gave an account in the last
+chapter, and also probably another for Piso, of which we have
+nothing left. We cannot but marvel that he should have been able at
+such a time to devote his mind to such subjects, and carefully to
+study all the details of legal cases. It was only on October 21st
+that Murena had been elected Consul; and yet on the 20th of
+November Cicero defended him with great skill on a charge of
+bribery. There is an ease, a playfulness, a softness, a drollery
+about this speech which appears to be almost incompatible with the
+stern, absorbing realities and great personal dangers in the midst
+of which he was placed; but the agility of his mind was such that
+there appears to have been no difficulty to him in these rapid
+changes.</p>
+
+<p>On the same day, the 20th of November, when Cicero was defending
+Murena, the plot was being carried on at the house of a certain
+Roman lady named Sempronia. It was she of whom Sallust said that
+she danced better than became an honest woman. If we can believe
+Sallust, she was steeped in luxury and vice. At her house a most
+vile project was hatched for introducing into Rome Rome's bitterest
+foreign foes. There were in the city at this time certain delegates
+from a people called the Allobroges, who inhabited the lower part
+of Savoy. The Allobroges were of Gaulish race. They were warlike,
+angry, and at the present moment peculiarly discontented with Rome.
+There had been certain injuries, either real or presumed,
+respecting which these delegates had been sent to the city. There
+they had been delayed, and fobbed <span class='pagenum'><a name=
+"Page_231" id="Page_231">231</a></span>off with official replies which
+gave no satisfaction, and were supposed to be ready to do any evil
+possible to the Republic. What if they could be got to go back
+suddenly to their homes, and bring a legion of red-haired Gauls to
+assist the conspirators in burning down Rome? A deputation from the
+delegates came to Sempronia's house and there met the
+conspirators&mdash;Lentulus and others. They entered freely into
+the project; but having, as was usual with foreign embassies at
+Rome, a patron or peculiar friend of their own among the
+aristocracy, one Fabius Sanga by name, they thought it well to
+consult him.<a name="FNanchor_203_203" id="FNanchor_203_203"></a><a
+href="#Footnote_203_203" class="fnanchor">203</a> Sanga, as a
+matter of course, told everything to our astute Consul.</p>
+
+<p>Then the matter was arranged with more than all the craft of a
+modern inspector of police. The Allobroges were instructed to lend
+themselves to the device, stipulating, however, that they should
+have a written signed authority which they could show to their
+rulers at home. The written signed documents were given to them.
+With certain conspirators to help them out of the city they were
+sent upon their way. At a bridge over the Tiber they were stopped
+by Cicero's emissaries. There was a feigned fight, but no blood was
+shed; and the ambassadors with their letters were brought home to
+the Consul.</p>
+
+<p>We are astonished at the marvellous folly of these conspirators,
+so that we could hardly have believed the story had it not been
+told alike by Cicero and by Sallust, and had not allusion to the
+details been common among later writers.<a name="FNanchor_204_204"
+id="FNanchor_204_204"></a><a href="#Footnote_204_204" class=
+"fnanchor">204</a> The ambassadors <span class='pagenum'><a name=
+"Page_232" id="Page_232">232</a></span>were taken at the
+Milvian bridge early on the morning of the 3d of December, and in
+the course of that day Cicero sent for the leaders of the
+conspiracy to come to him. Lentulus, who was then Pr&aelig;tor,
+Cethegus, Gabinius, and Statilius all obeyed the summons. They did
+not know what had occurred, and probably thought that their best
+hope of safety lay in compliance. C&aelig;parius was also sent for, but
+he for the moment escaped&mdash;in vain; for before two days were
+over he had been taken and put to death with the others. Cicero
+again called the Senate together, and entered the meeting leading
+the guilty Pr&aelig;tor by the hand. Here the offenders were examined
+and practically acknowledged their guilt. The proofs against them
+were so convincing that they could not deny it. There were the
+signatures of some; arms were found hidden in the house of another.
+The Senate decreed that the men should be kept in durance till some
+decision as to their fate should have been pronounced. Each of them
+was then given in custody to some noble Roman of the day. Lentulus
+the Pr&aelig;tor was confided to the keeping of a Censor, Cethegus to
+Cornificius, Statilius to C&aelig;sar, Gabinius to Crassus, and
+C&aelig;parius, who had not fled very far before he was taken, to one
+Terentius. We can imagine how willingly would Crassus and
+C&aelig;sar have let their men go, had they dared. But Cicero was
+in the ascendant. C&aelig;sar, whom we can imagine to have
+understood that the hour had not yet come for putting an end to the
+effete Republic, and to have perceived also that Catiline was no
+fit helpmate for him in such a work, must bide his time, and for
+the moment obey. That he was inclined to favor the conspirators
+there is no doubt; but at present he could befriend them only in
+accordance with the law. The Allobroges were rewarded. The Pr&aelig;tors
+in the city who had assisted Cicero were thanked. To Cicero himself
+a supplication was decreed. A supplication was, in its origin, a
+thanksgiving to the gods on account of a victory, but had come to
+be an honor shown to the General who had gained the victory.<span
+class='pagenum'><a name="Page_233" id="Page_233">
+233</a></span>In this case it was simply a means of adding glory
+to Cicero, and was peculiar, as hitherto the reward had only been
+conferred for military service.<a name="FNanchor_205_205" id=
+"FNanchor_205_205"></a><a href="#Footnote_205_205" class=
+"fnanchor">205</a> Remembering that, we can understand what at
+the time must have been the feeling in Rome as to the benefits
+conferred by the activity and patriotism of the Consul.</p>
+
+<p>On the evening of the same day, the 3d of December, Cicero again
+addressed the people, explaining to them what he had done, and what
+he had before explained in the Senate. This was the third Catiline
+speech, and for rapid narrative is perhaps surpassed by nothing
+that he ever spoke. He explains again the motives by which he had
+been actuated; and in doing so extols the courage, the sagacity,
+the activity of Catiline, while he ridicules the folly and the fury
+of the others.<a name="FNanchor_206_206" id=
+"FNanchor_206_206"></a><a href="#Footnote_206_206" class=
+"fnanchor">206</a> Had Catiline remained, he says, we should have
+been forced to fight with him here in the city; but with Lentulus
+the sleepy, and Cassius the fat, and Cethegus the mad, it has been
+comparatively easy to deal. It was on this account that he had got
+rid of him, knowing that their presence would do no harm. Then he
+reminds the people of all that the gods have done for them, and
+addresses them in language which makes one feel that they did
+believe in their gods. It is one instance, one out of many which
+history and experience afford us, in which an honest and a good man
+has endeavored to use for salutary purposes a faith in which he has
+not himself participated. Does the bishop of to-day, when he calls
+upon his clergy to <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_234" id=
+"Page_234">234</a></span>pray for fine weather, believe that
+the Almighty will change the ordained seasons, and cause his causes
+to be inoperative because farmers are anxious for their hay or for
+their wheat? But he feels that when men are in trouble it is well
+that they should hold communion with the powers of heaven. So much
+also Cicero believed, and therefore spoke as he did on this
+occasion. As to his own religious views, I shall say something in a
+future chapter.</p>
+
+<p>Then in a passage most beautiful for its language, though it is
+hardly in accordance with our idea of the manner in which a man
+should speak of himself, he explains his own ambition: "For all
+which, my fellow-countrymen, I ask for no other recompense, no
+ornament or honor, no monument but that this day may live in your
+memories. It is within your breasts that I would garner and keep
+fresh my triumph, my glory, the trophies of my exploits. No silent,
+voiceless statue, nothing which can be bestowed upon the worthless,
+can give me delight. Only by your remembrance can my fortunes be
+nurtured&mdash;by your good words, by the records which you shall
+cause to be written, can they be strengthened and perpetuated. I do
+think that this day, the memory of which, I trust, may be eternal,
+will be famous in history because the city has been preserved, and
+because my Consulship has been glorious."<a name="FNanchor_207_207"
+id="FNanchor_207_207"></a><a href="#Footnote_207_207" class=
+"fnanchor">207</a> He ends the paragraph by an allusion to
+Pompey, admitting Pompey to a brotherhood of patriotism and praise.
+We shall see how Pompey repaid him.</p>
+
+<p>How many things must have been astir in his mind when he spoke
+those words of Pompey! In the next sentence he tells the people of
+his own danger. He has taken care of their safety; it is for them
+to take care of his.<a name="FNanchor_208_208" id=
+"FNanchor_208_208"></a><a href="#Footnote_208_208" class=
+"fnanchor">208</a> But they, these Quirites, these Roman
+citizens, these masters of the world, by whom everything was
+supposed to be governed, could take care <span class='pagenum'><a
+name="Page_235" id="Page_235">235</a></span>of no one;
+certainly not of themselves, as certainly not of another. They
+could only vote, now this way and now that, as somebody might tell
+them, or more probably as somebody might pay them. Pompey was
+coming home, and would soon be the favorite. Cicero must have felt
+that he had deserved much of Pompey, but was by no means sure that
+the debt of gratitude would be paid.</p>
+
+<p>Now we come to the fourth or last Catiline oration, which was
+made to the Senate, convened on the 5th of December with the
+purpose of deciding the fate of the leading conspirators who were
+held in custody. We learn to what purport were three of the
+speeches made during this debate&mdash;those of C&aelig;sar and of
+Cato and of Cicero. The first two are given to us by Sallust, but
+we can hardly think that we have the exact words. The
+C&aelig;sarean spirit which induced Sallust to ignore altogether
+the words of Cicero would have induced him to give his own
+representation of the other two, even though we were to suppose
+that he had been able to have them taken down by short-hand
+writers&mdash;Cicero's words, we have no doubt, with such polishing
+as may have been added to the short-hand writers' notes by Tiro,
+his slave and secretary. The three are compatible each with the
+other, and we are entitled to believe that we know the line of
+argument used by the three orators.</p>
+
+<p>Silanus, one of the Consuls elect, began the debate by
+counselling death. We may take it for granted that he had been
+persuaded by Cicero to make this proposition. During the discussion
+he trembled at the consequences, and declared himself for an
+adjournment of their decision till they should have dealt with
+Catiline. Murena, the other Consul elect, and Catulus, the Prince
+of the Senate,<a name="FNanchor_209_209" id=
+"FNanchor_209_209"></a><a href="#Footnote_209_209" class=
+"fnanchor">209</a> spoke for death. Tiberius Nero, grandfather of
+Tiberius the Emperor, made that proposition for <span class=
+'pagenum'><a name="Page_236" id="Page_236">
+236</a></span>adjournment to which Silanus gave way. Then&mdash;or
+I should rather say in the course of the debate, for we do not know
+who else may have spoken&mdash;C&aelig;sar got up and made his
+proposition. His purpose was to save the victims, but he knew well
+that, with such a spirit abroad as that existing in the Senate and
+the city, he could only do so not by absolving but by condemning.
+Wicked as these men might be, abominably wicked it was, he said,
+for the Senate to think of their own dignity rather than of the
+enormity of the crime. As they could not, he suggested, invent any
+new punishment adequate to so abominable a crime, it would be
+better that they should leave the conspirators to be dealt with by
+the ordinary laws. It was thus that, cunningly, he threw out the
+idea that as Senators they had no power of death. He did not dare
+to tell them directly that any danger would menace them, but he
+exposed the danger skilfully before their eyes. "Their crimes," he
+says again, "deserve worse than any torture you can inflict. But
+men generally recollect what comes last. When the punishment is
+severe, men will remember the severity rather than the crime." He
+argues all this extremely well. The speech is one of great
+ingenuity, whether the words be the words of Sallust or of
+C&aelig;sar. We may doubt, indeed, whether the general assertion he
+made as to death had much weight with the Senators when he told
+them that death to the wicked was a relief, whereas life was a
+lasting punishment; but when he went on to remind them of the Lex
+Porcia, by which the power of punishing a Roman citizen, even under
+the laws, was limited to banishment, unless by a plebiscite of the
+people generally ordering death, then he was efficacious. He ended
+by proposing that the goods of the conspirators should be sold, and
+that the men should be condemned to imprisonment for life, each in
+some separate town. This would, I believe, have been quite as
+illegal as the death-sentence, but it would not have been
+irrevocable. The Senate, or the people, in the next year could have
+restored to the men their liberty, and <span class='pagenum'><a
+name="Page_237" id="Page_237">237</a></span>compensated them
+for their property. Cicero was determined that the men should die.
+They had not obeyed him by leaving the city, and he was convinced
+that while they lived the conspiracy would live also. He fully
+understood the danger, and resolved to meet it. He replied to
+C&aelig;sar, and with infinite skill refrained from the expression
+of any strong opinion, while he led his hearers to the conviction
+that death was necessary. For himself he had been told of his
+danger; "but if a man be brave in his duty death cannot be
+disgraceful to him; to one who had reached the honors of the
+Consulship it could not be premature; to no wise man could it be a
+misery." Though his brother, though his wife, though his little
+boy, and his daughter just married were warning him of his peril,
+not by all that would he be influenced. "Do you," he says,
+"Conscript Fathers, look to the safety of the Republic. These are
+not the Gracchi, nor Saturninus, who are brought to you for
+judgment&mdash;men who broke the laws, indeed, and therefore
+suffered death, but who still were not unpatriotic. These men had
+sworn to burn the city, to slay the Senate, to force Catiline upon
+you as a ruler. The proofs of this are in your own hands. It was
+for me, as your Consul, to bring the facts before you. Now it is
+for you, at once, before night, to decide what shall be done. The
+conspirators are very many; it is not only with these few that you
+are dealing. On whatever you decide, decide quickly. C&aelig;sar
+tells you of the Sempronian law<a name="FNanchor_210_210" id=
+"FNanchor_210_210"></a><a href="#Footnote_210_210" class=
+"fnanchor">210</a>&mdash;the law, namely, forbidding the death of
+a Roman citizen&mdash;but can he be regarded as a citizen who has
+been found in arms against the city?" Then there is a fling at
+C&aelig;sar's assumed clemency, showing us that C&aelig;sar had
+already <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_238" id="Page_238">
+238</a></span>endeavored to make capital out of that virtue which
+he displayed afterward so signally at Alesia and Uxellodunum. Then
+again he speaks of himself in words so grand that it is impossible
+but to sympathize with him: "Let Scipio's name be glorious&mdash;he
+by whose wisdom and valor Hannibal was forced out of Italy. Let
+Africanus be praised loudly, who destroyed Carthage and Numantia,
+the two cities which were most hostile to Rome. Let Paulus be
+regarded as great&mdash;he whose triumph that great King Perses
+adorned. Let Marius be held in undying honor, who twice saved Italy
+from foreign yoke. Let Pompey be praised above all, whose noble
+deeds are as wide as the sun's course. Perhaps among them there may
+be a spot, too, for me; unless, indeed, to win provinces to which
+we may take ourselves in exile is more than to guard that city to
+which the conquerors of provinces may return in safety." The last
+words of the orator also are fine: "Therefore, Conscript Fathers,
+decide wisely and without fear. Your own safety, and that of your
+wives and children, that of your hearths and altars, the temples of
+your gods, the homes contained in your city, your liberty, the
+welfare of Italy and of the whole Republic are at stake. It is for
+you to decide. In me you have a Consul who will obey your decrees,
+and will see that they be made to prevail while the breath of life
+remains to him." Cato then spoke advocating death, and the Senate
+decreed that the men should die. Cicero himself led Lentulus down
+to the vaulted prison below, in which executioners were ready for
+the work, and the other four men were made to follow. A few minutes
+afterward, in the gleaming of the evening, when Cicero was being
+led home by the applauding multitude, he was asked after the fate
+of the conspirators. He answered them but by one word
+"Vixerunt"&mdash;there is said to have been a superstition with the
+Romans as to all mention of death&mdash;"They have lived their
+lives."</p>
+
+<p>As to what was being done outside Rome with the army of
+conspirators in Etruria, it is not necessary for the biographer
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_239" id="Page_239">
+239</a></span>of Cicero to say much. Catiline fought, and died
+fighting. The conspiracy was then over. On the 31st of December
+Cicero retired from his office, and Catiline fell at the battle of
+Pistoia on the 5th of January following, <span class=
+"smcap">b.c.</span> 62.</p>
+
+<p>A Roman historian writing in the reign of Tiberius has thought
+it worth his while to remind us that a great glory was added to
+Cicero's consular year by the birth of Augustus&mdash;him who
+afterward became Augustus C&aelig;sar.<a name="FNanchor_211_211"
+id="FNanchor_211_211"></a><a href="#Footnote_211_211" class=
+"fnanchor">211</a> Had a Roman been living now, he might be
+excused for saying that it was an honor to Augustus to have been
+born in the year of Cicero's Consulship.</p>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_240" id="Page_240">
+240</a></span></p>
+
+<h3><a name="CHAPTER_X" id="CHAPTER_X"></a><span class="smcap">Chapter X.</span></h3>
+
+<h4><i>CICERO AFTER HIS CONSULSHIP.</i></h4>
+
+<p>The idea that the great Consul had done illegally in putting
+citizens to death was not allowed to lie dormant even for a day. It
+must be remembered that a decree of the Senate had no power as a
+law. The laws could be altered, or even a new law made, only by the
+people. Such was the constitution of the Republic. Further on, when
+Cicero will appeal as, in fact, on trial for the offence so alleged
+to have been committed, I shall have to discuss the matter; but the
+point was raised against him, even in the moment of his triumph, as
+he was leaving the Consulship. The reiteration of his self-praise
+had created for him many enemies. It had turned friends against
+him, and had driven men even of his own party to ask themselves
+whether all this virtue was to be endured. When a man assumes to be
+more just than his neighbors there will be many ways found of
+throwing in a shell against him. It was customary for a Consul when
+he vacated his office to make some valedictory speech. Cicero was
+probably expected to take full advantage of the opportunity. From
+other words which have come from him, on other occasions but on the
+same subject, it would not be difficult to compose such a speech as
+he might have spoken. But there were those who were already sick of
+hearing him say that Rome had been saved by his intelligence and
+courage. We can imagine what C&aelig;sar might have said among his
+friends of the expediency of putting down this self-laudatory
+Consul. As it was, Metellus Nepos, one of the Tribunes, forbade the
+retiring officer to do more <span class='pagenum'><a name=
+"Page_241" id="Page_241">241</a></span>than take the oath
+usual on leaving office, because he had illegally inflicted death
+upon Roman citizens. Metellus, as Tribune, had the power of
+stopping any official proceeding. We hear from Cicero himself that
+he was quite equal to the occasion. He swore, on the spur of the
+moment, a solemn oath, not in accordance with the form common to
+Consuls on leaving office, but to the effect that during his
+Consulship Rome had been saved by his work alone.<a name=
+"FNanchor_212_212" id="FNanchor_212_212"></a><a href=
+"#Footnote_212_212" class="fnanchor">212</a> We have the story
+only as it is told by Cicero himself, who avers that the people
+accepted the oath as sworn with exceeding praise.<a name=
+"FNanchor_213_213" id="FNanchor_213_213"></a><a href=
+"#Footnote_213_213" class="fnanchor">213</a> That it was so we
+may, I think, take as true. There can be no doubt as to Cicero's
+popularity at this moment, and hardly a doubt also as to the fact
+that Metellus was acting in agreement with C&aelig;sar, and also in
+accord with the understood feelings of Pompey, who was absent with
+his army in the East. This Tribune had been till lately an officer
+under Pompey, and went into office together with C&aelig;sar, who
+in that year became Pr&aelig;tor. This, probably, was the beginning of
+the party which two years afterward formed the first Triumvirate,
+<span class="smcap">b.c.</span> 60. It was certainly now, in the
+year succeeding the Consulship of Cicero, that C&aelig;sar, as
+Pr&aelig;tor, began his great career.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote"><span class="smcap">b.c.</span> 62,
+&aelig;tat 45.</div>
+
+<p>It becomes manifest to us, as we read the history of the time,
+that the Dictator of the future was gradually entertaining the idea
+that the old forms of the Republic were rotten, and that any man
+who intended to exercise power in Rome or within the Roman Empire
+must obtain it and keep it by illegal means. He had probably
+adhered to Catiline's first conspiracy, but only with such moderate
+adhesion as enabled him to withdraw when he found that his
+companions were not fit for the work. It is manifest that he
+sympathized with the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_242" id=
+"Page_242">242</a></span>later conspiracy, though it may be
+doubted whether he himself had ever been a party to it. When the
+conspiracy had been crushed by Cicero, he had given his full assent
+to the crushing of it. We have seen how loudly he condemned the
+wickedness of the conspirators in his endeavor to save their lives.
+But, through it all, there was a well-grounded conviction in his
+mind that Cicero, with all his virtues, was not practical. Not that
+Cicero was to him the same as Cato, who with his Stoic
+grandiloquence must, to his thinking, have been altogether useless.
+Cicero, though too virtuous for supreme rule, too virtuous to seize
+power and hold it, too virtuous to despise as effete the
+institutions of the Republic, was still a man so gifted, and
+capable in so many things, as to be very great as an assistant, if
+he would only condescend to assist. It is in this light that
+C&aelig;sar seems to have regarded Cicero as time went on; admiring
+him, liking him, willing to act with him if it might be possible,
+but not the less determined to put down all the attempts at
+patriotic republican virtue in which the orator delighted to
+indulge. Mr. Forsyth expresses an opinion that C&aelig;sar, till he
+crossed the Rubicon after his ten years' fighting in Gaul, had
+entertained no settled plan of overthrowing the Constitution.
+Probably not; nor even then. It may be doubted whether C&aelig;sar
+ever spoke to himself of overthrowing the Constitution. He came
+gradually to see that power and wealth were to be obtained by
+violent action, and only by violent action. He had before him the
+examples of Marius and Sulla, both of whom had enjoyed power and
+had died in their beds. There was the example, also, of others who,
+walking unwarily in those perilous times, had been banished as was
+Verres, or killed as was Catiline. We can easily understand that
+he, with his great genius, should have acknowledged the need both
+of courage and caution. Both were exercised when he consented to be
+absent from Rome, and almost from Italy, during the ten years of
+the Gallic wars. But this, I think, is certain, that from the time
+in which his name appears prominent&mdash;from <span class=
+'pagenum'><a name="Page_243" id="Page_243">243</a></span>the
+period, namely, of the Catiline conspiracy&mdash;he had determined
+not to overthrow the Constitution, but so to carry himself, amid
+the great affairs of the day, as not to be overthrown himself.</p>
+
+<p>Of what nature was the intercourse between him and Pompey when
+Pompey was still absent in the East we do not know; but we can
+hardly doubt that some understanding had begun to exist. Of this
+Cicero was probably aware. Pompey was the man whom Cicero chose to
+regard as his party-leader, not having himself been inured to the
+actual politics of Rome early enough in life to put himself forward
+as the leader of his party. It had been necessary for him, as a
+"novus homo," to come forward and work as an advocate, and then as
+an administrative officer of the State, before he took up with
+politics. That this was so I have shown by quoting the opening
+words of his speech Pro Lege Manilia. Proud as he was of the doings
+of his Consulship, he was still too new to his work to think that
+thus he could claim to stand first. Nor did his ambition lead him
+in that direction. He desired personal praise rather than personal
+power. When in the last Catiline oration to the people he speaks of
+the great men of the Republic&mdash;of the two Scipios, and of
+Paulus &AElig;milius and of Marius&mdash;he adds the name of Pompey to
+these names; or gives, rather, to Pompey greater glory than to any
+of them; "Anteponatur omnibus Pompeius." This was but a few days
+before Metellus as Tribune had stopped him in his speech&mdash;at
+the instigation, probably, of C&aelig;sar, and in furtherance of
+Pompey's views. Pompey and C&aelig;sar could agree, at any rate, in
+this&mdash;that they did not want such a one as Cicero to interfere
+with them.</p>
+
+<p>All of which Cicero himself perceived. The specially rich
+province of Macedonia, which would have been his had he chosen to
+take it on quitting the Consulship, he made over to Antony&mdash;no
+doubt as a bribe, as with us one statesman may resign a special
+office to another to keep that other from kicking over the traces.
+Then Gaul became his province, <span class='pagenum'><a name=
+"Page_244" id="Page_244">244</a></span>as
+allotted&mdash;Cisalpine Gaul, as northern Italy was then called; a
+province less rich in plunder and pay than Macedonia. But Cicero
+wanted no province, and had contrived that this should be confided
+to Metellus Celer, the brother of Nepos, who, having been Pr&aelig;tor
+when he himself was Consul, was entitled to a government. This too
+was a political bribe. If courtesy to C&aelig;sar, if provinces
+given up here and there to Antonys and Metelluses, if flattery
+lavished on Pompey could avail anything, he could not afford to
+dispense with such aids. It all availed nothing. From this time
+forward, for the twenty years which were to run before his death,
+his life was one always of trouble and doubt, often of despair, and
+on many occasions of actual misery. The source of this was that
+Pompey whom, with divine attributes, he had extolled above all
+other Romans.</p>
+
+<p>The first extant letter written by Cicero after his Consulship
+was addressed to Pompey.<a name="FNanchor_214_214" id=
+"FNanchor_214_214"></a><a href="#Footnote_214_214" class=
+"fnanchor">214</a> Pompey was still in the East, but had
+completed his campaigns against Mithridates successfully. Cicero
+begins by congratulating him, as though to do so were the purpose
+of his letter. Then he tells the victorious General that there were
+some in Rome not so well pleased as he was at these victories. It
+is supposed that he alluded here to C&aelig;sar; but, if so, he
+probably misunderstood the alliance which was already being formed
+between C&aelig;sar and Pompey. After that comes the real object of
+the epistle. He had received letters from Pompey congratulating him
+in very cold language as to the glories of his Consulship. He had
+expected much more than that from the friend for whom he had done
+so much. Still, he thanks his friend, explaining that the
+satisfaction really necessary to him was the feeling that he had
+behaved well to his friend. If his friend were less friendly to him
+in return, then would the balance of friendship be on his side. If
+Pompey <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_245" id="Page_245">
+245</a></span>were not bound to him, Cicero, by personal
+gratitude, still would he be bound by necessary co-operation in the
+service of the Republic. But, lest Pompey should misunderstand him,
+he declares that he had expected warmer language in reference to
+his Consulship, which he believes to have been withheld by Pompey
+lest offence should be given to some third person. By this he means
+C&aelig;sar, and those who were now joining themselves to
+C&aelig;sar. Then he goes on to warn him as to the future:
+"Nevertheless, when you return, you will find that my actions have
+been of such a nature that, even though you may loom larger than
+Scipio, I shall be found worthy to be accepted as your L&aelig;lius."<a
+name="FNanchor_215_215" id="FNanchor_215_215"></a><a href=
+"#Footnote_215_215" class="fnanchor">215</a></p>
+
+<p>Infinite care had been given to the writing of this letter, and
+sharp had been the heart-burnings which dictated it. It was only by
+asserting that he, on his own part, was satisfied with his own
+fidelity as a friend, that Cicero could express his dissatisfaction
+at Pompey's coldness. It was only by continuing to lavish upon
+Pompey such flattery as was contained in the reference to Scipio,
+in which a touch of subtle irony is mixed with the flattery, that
+he could explain the nature of the praise which had, he thought,
+been due to himself. There is something that would have been abject
+in the nature of these expressions, had it not been Roman in the
+excess of the adulation. But there is courage in the letter, too,
+when he tells his correspondent what he believes to have been the
+cause of the coldness of which he complains: "Quod verere ne cujus
+animum offenderes"&mdash;"Because you fear lest you should give
+offence to some one." But let me tell you, he goes on to say, that
+my Consulship has been of such a nature that you, Scipio, as you
+are, must admit me as your friend.</p>
+
+<p>In these words we find a key to the whole of Cicero's connection
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_246" id="Page_246">
+246</a></span>with the man whom he recognizes as his political
+leader. He was always dissatisfied with Pompey; always accusing
+Pompey in his heart of ingratitude and insincerity; frequently
+speaking to Atticus with bitter truth of the man's selfishness and
+incapacity, even of his cruelty and want of patriotism; nicknaming
+him because of his absurdities; declaring of him that he was minded
+to be a second Sulla; but still clinging to him as the political
+friend and leader whom he was bound to follow. In their earlier
+years, when he could have known personally but little of Pompey,
+because Pompey was generally absent from Rome, he had taken it into
+his head to love the man. He had been called "Magnus;" he had been
+made Consul long before the proper time; he had been successful on
+behalf of the Republic, and so far patriotic. He had hitherto
+adhered to the fame of the Republic. At any rate, Cicero had
+accepted him, and could never afterward bring himself to be
+disloyal to the leader with whom he had professed to act. But the
+feeling evinced in this letter was carried on to the end. He had
+been, he was, he would be, true to his political connection with
+Pompey; but of Pompey's personal character to himself he had
+nothing but complaints to make.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote"><span class="smcap">b.c.</span> 62,
+&aelig;tat 45.</div>
+
+<p>We have two other letters written by Cicero in this year, the
+first of which is in answer to one from Metellus Celer to him, also
+extant. Metellus wrote to complain of the ill-treatment which he
+thought he had received from Cicero in the Senate, and from the
+Senate generally. Cicero writes back at much greater length to
+defend himself, and to prove that he had behaved as a most obliging
+friend to his correspondent, though he had received a gross affront
+from his correspondent's brother Nepos. Nepos had prevented him in
+that matter of the speech. It is hardly necessary to go into the
+question of this quarrel, except in so far as it may show how the
+feeling which led to Cicero's exile was growing up among many of
+the aristocracy in Rome. There was a counterplot going on at the
+moment&mdash;a plot on the behalf of <span class='pagenum'><a name=
+"Page_247" id="Page_247">247</a></span>the aristocracy for
+bringing back Pompey to Rome, not only with glory but with power,
+probably originating in a feeling that Pompey would be a more
+congenial master than Cicero. It was suggested that as Pompey had
+been found good in all State emergencies&mdash;for putting down the
+pirates, for instance, and for conquering Mithridates&mdash;he
+would be the man to contend in arms with Catiline. Catiline was
+killed before the matter could be brought to an issue, but still
+the conspiracy went on, based on the jealousy which was felt in
+regard to Cicero. This man, who had declared so often that he had
+served his country, and who really had crushed the Catilinarians by
+his industry and readiness, might, after all, be coming forward as
+another Sulla, and looking to make himself master by dint of his
+virtues and his eloquence. The hopelessness of the condition of the
+Republic may be recognized in the increasing conspiracies which
+were hatched on every side. Metellus Nepos was sent home from Asia
+in aid of the conspiracy, and got himself made Tribune, and stopped
+Cicero's speech. In conjunction with C&aelig;sar, who was Pr&aelig;tor,
+he proposed his new law for the calling of Pompey to their aid.
+Then there was a fracas between him and C&aelig;sar on the one side
+and Cato on the other, in which Cato at last was so far victorious
+that both C&aelig;sar and Metellus were stopped in the performance
+of their official duties. C&aelig;sar was soon reinstated, but
+Metellus Nepos returned to Pompey in the East, and nothing came of
+the conspiracy. It is only noticed here as evidence of the feeling
+which existed as to Cicero in Rome, and as explaining the
+irritation on both sides indicated in the correspondence between
+Cicero and Metellus Celer, the brother of Nepos,<a name=
+"FNanchor_216_216" id="FNanchor_216_216"></a><a href=
+"#Footnote_216_216" class="fnanchor">216</a> whom Cicero had
+procured the government of Gaul.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_248" id="Page_248">
+248</a></span>The third letter from Cicero in this year was to
+Sextius, who was then acting as Qu&aelig;stor&mdash;or Proqu&aelig;stor, as
+Cicero calls him&mdash;with Antony as Proconsul in Macedonia. It is
+specially interesting as telling us that the writer had just
+completed the purchase of a house in Rome from Crassus for a sum
+amounting to about &pound;30,000 of our money. There was probably
+no private mansion in Rome of greater pretension. It had been owned
+by Livius Drusus, the Tribune&mdash;a man of colossal fortune, as
+we are told by Mommsen&mdash;who was murdered at the door of it
+thirty years before. It afterward passed into the hands of Crassus
+the rich, and now became the property of Cicero. We shall hear how
+it was destroyed during his exile, and how fraudulently made over
+to the gods, and then how restored to Cicero, and how rebuilt at
+the public expense. The history of the house has been so well
+written that we know even the names of Cicero's two successors in
+it, Censorinus and Statilius.<a name="FNanchor_217_217" id=
+"FNanchor_217_217"></a><a href="#Footnote_217_217" class=
+"fnanchor">217</a> It is interesting to know the sort of house
+which Cicero felt to be suitable to his circumstances, for by that
+we may guess what his circumstances were. In making this purchase
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_249" id="Page_249">
+249</a></span>he is supposed to have abandoned the family house in
+which his father had lived next door to the new mansion, and to
+have given it up to his brother. Hence we may argue that he had
+conceived himself to have risen in worldly circumstances.
+Nevertheless, we are informed by himself in this letter to Sextius
+that he had to borrow money for the occasion&mdash;so much so that,
+being a man now indebted, he might be supposed to be ripe for any
+conspiracy. Hence has come to us a story through Aulus Gellius, the
+compiler of anecdotes, to the effect that Cicero was fain to borrow
+this money from a client whose cause he undertook in requital for
+the favor so conferred. Aulus Gellius collected his stories two
+centuries afterward for the amusement of his children, and has
+never been regarded as an authority in matters for which
+confirmation has been wanting. There is no allusion to such
+borrowing from a client made by any contemporary. In this letter to
+Sextius, in which he speaks jokingly of his indebtedness, he
+declares that he has been able to borrow any amount he wanted at
+six per cent&mdash;twelve being the ordinary rate&mdash;and gives
+as a reason for this the position which he has achieved by his
+services to the State. Very much has been said of the story, as
+though the purchaser of the house had done something of which he
+ought to have been ashamed, but this seems to have sprung entirely
+from the idea that a man who, in the midst of such wealth as
+prevailed at Rome, had practised so widely and so successfully the
+invaluable profession of an advocate, must surely have taken money
+for his services. He himself has asserted that he took none, and
+all the evidence that we have goes to show that he spoke the truth.
+Had he taken money, even as a loan, we should have heard of it from
+nearer witnesses than Aulus Gellius, if, as Aulus Gellius tells us,
+it had become known at the time. But because he tells his friend
+that he has borrowed money for the purpose, he is supposed to have
+borrowed it in a disgraceful manner! It will be found that all the
+stones most injurious to Cicero's reputation have been produced in
+the same manner. His own words <span class='pagenum'><a name=
+"Page_250" id="Page_250">250</a></span>have been
+misinterpreted&mdash;either the purport of them, if spoken in
+earnest, or their bearing, if spoken in joke&mdash;and then
+accusations have been founded on them.<a name="FNanchor_218_218"
+id="FNanchor_218_218"></a><a href="#Footnote_218_218" class=
+"fnanchor">218</a></p>
+
+<p>Another charge of dishonest practice was about this time made
+against Cicero without a grain of evidence, though indeed the
+accusations so made, and insisted upon, apparently from a feeling
+that Cicero cannot surely have been altogether clean when all
+others were so dirty, are too numerous to receive from each
+reader's judgment that indignant denial to which each is entitled.
+The biographer cannot but fear that when so much mud has been
+thrown some will stick, and therefore almost hesitates to tell of
+the mud, believing that no stain of this kind has been in truth
+deserved.</p>
+
+<p>It seems that Antony, Cicero's colleague in the Consulship,
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_251" id="Page_251">
+251</a></span>who became Proconsul in Macedonia, had undertaken to
+pay some money to Cicero. Why the money was to be paid we do not
+know, but there are allusions in Cicero's letters to Atticus to one
+Teucris (a Trojan woman), and it seems that Antony was designated
+by the nickname. Teucris is very slow at paying his money, and
+Cicero is in want of it. But perhaps it will be as well not to push
+the matter. He, Antony, is to be tried for provincial peculation,
+and Cicero declares that the case is so bad that he cannot defend
+his late colleague. Hence have arisen two different suspicions: one
+that Antony had agreed to make over to Cicero a share of the
+Macedonian plunder in requital of Cicero's courtesy in giving up
+the province which had been allotted to himself; the second, that
+Antony was to pay Cicero for defending him. As to the former,
+Cicero himself alludes to such a report as being common in
+Macedonia, and as having been used by Antony himself as an excuse
+for increased rapine. But this has been felt to be incredible, and
+has been allowed to fall to the ground because of the second
+accusation. But in support of that there is no word of evidence,<a
+name="FNanchor_219_219" id="FNanchor_219_219"></a><a href=
+"#Footnote_219_219" class="fnanchor">219</a> whereas the tenor of
+the story as told by Cicero himself is against it. Is it likely,
+would it be possible, that Cicero should have begun his letter to
+Atticus by complaining that he could not get from Antony money
+wanted for a peculiar purpose&mdash;it was wanted for his new
+house&mdash;and have gone on in the same letter to say that this
+might be as well, after all, as he did not intend to perform the
+service for which the money was to be paid? The reader will
+remember that the accusation is based solely on Cicero's own
+statement that Antony was negligent in paying to him money <span
+class='pagenum'><a name="Page_252" id="Page_252">
+252</a></span>that had been promised. In all these accusations the
+evidence against Cicero, such as it is, is brought exclusively from
+Cicero's own words. Cicero did afterward defend this Antony, as we
+learn from his speech Pro Domo Su&acirc;; but his change of purpose
+in that respect has nothing to do with the argument.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote"><span class="smcap">b.c.</span> 62,
+&aelig;tat 45.</div>
+
+<p>We have two speeches extant made this year: one on behalf of P.
+Sulla, nephew to the Dictator; the other for Archias the Greek
+scholar and poet, who had been Cicero's tutor and now claimed to be
+a citizen of Rome. I have already given an extract from this
+letter, as showing the charm of words with which Cicero could
+recommend the pursuit of literature to his hearers. The whole
+oration is a beautiful morsel of Latinity, in which, however,
+strength of argument is lacking. Cicero declares of Archias that he
+was so eminent in literature that, if not a Roman citizen, he ought
+to be made one. The result is not known, but the literary world
+believes that the citizenship was accorded to him.<a name=
+"FNanchor_220_220" id="FNanchor_220_220"></a><a href=
+"#Footnote_220_220" class="fnanchor">220</a></p>
+
+<p>The speech on behalf of Sulla was more important, but still not
+of much importance. This Sulla, as may be remembered, had been
+chosen as Consul with Autronius, two years before the Consulship of
+Cicero, and he had then after his election been deposed for
+bribery, as had also Autronius. L. Aurelius Cotta and L. Manlius
+Torquatus had been elected in their places. It has also been
+already explained that the two rejected Consuls had on this account
+joined Catiline in his first conspiracy.<span class='pagenum'><a
+name="Page_253" id="Page_253">253</a></span>There can be no
+doubt that whether as Consuls or as rejected Consuls, and on that
+account conspirators, their purpose was to use their position as
+aristocrats for robbing the State. They were of the number of those
+to whom no other purpose was any longer possible. Then there came
+Catiline's second conspiracy&mdash;the conspiracy which Cicero had
+crushed&mdash;and there naturally rose the question whether from
+time to time this or the other noble Roman should not be accused of
+having joined it. Many noble Romans had no doubt joined besides
+those who had fallen fighting, or who had been executed in the
+dungeons. Accusations became very rife. One Vettius accused
+C&aelig;sar, the Pr&aelig;tor; but C&aelig;sar, with that potentiality
+which was peculiar to him, caused Vettius to be put into prison
+instead of going to prison himself. Many were convicted and
+banished; among them Porcius Leca, Vargunteius, Servius Sulla, the
+brother of him of whom we are now speaking, and Autronius his
+colleague. In the trial of these men Cicero took no part. He was
+specially invited by Autronius, who was an old school-fellow, to
+defend him, but he refused; indeed, he gave evidence against
+Autronius at the trial. But this Publius Sulla he did defend, and
+defended successfully. He was joined in the case with Hortensius,
+and declared that as to the matter of the former conspiracy he left
+all that to his learned friend, who was concerned with political
+matters of that date.<a name="FNanchor_221_221" id=
+"FNanchor_221_221"></a><a href="#Footnote_221_221" class=
+"fnanchor">221</a> He, Cicero, had known nothing about them. The
+part of the oration which most interests us is that in which he
+defends himself from the accusations somewhat unwisely made against
+himself personally by young Torquatus, the son of him who had been
+raised to the Consulship in the place of P. Sulla. Torquatus had
+called him a foreigner because he was a "novus <span class=
+'pagenum'><a name="Page_254" id="Page_254">
+254</a></span>homo," and had come from the municipality of
+Arpinum, and had taunted him with being a king, because he had
+usurped authority over life and death in regard to Lentulus and the
+other conspirators. He answers this very finely, and does so
+without an ill-natured word to young Torquatus, whom, from respect
+to his father, he desires to spare. "Do not," he says, "in future
+call me a foreigner, lest you be answered with severity, nor a
+king, lest you be laughed at&mdash;unless, indeed, you think it
+king-like so to live as to be a slave not only to no man but to no
+evil passion; unless you think it be king-like to despise all
+lusts, to thirst for neither gold nor silver nor goods, to express
+yourself freely in the Senate, to think more of services due to the
+people than of favors won from them, to yield to none, and to stand
+firm against many. If this be king-like, then I confess that I am a
+king." Sulla was acquitted, but the impartial reader will not the
+less feel sure that he had been part and parcel with Catiline in
+the conspiracy. It is trusted that the impartial reader will also
+remember how many honest, loyal gentlemen have in our own days
+undertaken the causes of those whom they have known to be rebels,
+and have saved those rebels by their ingenuity and eloquence.</p>
+
+<p>At the end of this year, <span class="smcap">b.c.</span> 62,
+there occurred a fracas in Rome which was of itself but of little
+consequence to Rome, and would have been of none to Cicero but that
+circumstances grew out of it which created for him the bitterest
+enemy he had yet encountered, and led to his sorest trouble. This
+was the affair of Clodius and of the mysteries of the Bona Dea, and
+I should be disposed to say that it was the greatest misfortune of
+his life, were it not that the wretched results which sprung from
+it would have been made to spring from some other source had that
+source not sufficed. I shall have to tell how it came to pass that
+Cicero was sent into exile by means of the misconduct of Clodius;
+but I shall have to show also that the misconduct of Clodius was
+but the tool which was used by those who were desirous of ridding
+themselves of the presence of Cicero.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_255" id="Page_255">
+255</a></span>This Clodius, a young man of noble family and of
+debauched manners, as was usual with young men of noble families,
+dressed himself up as a woman, and made his way in among the ladies
+as they were performing certain religious rites in honor of the
+Bona Dea, or Goddess Cybele, a matron goddess so chaste in her
+manners that no male was admitted into her presence. It was
+specially understood that nothing appertaining to a man was to be
+seen on the occasion, not even the portrait of one; and it may
+possibly have been the case that Clodius effected his entrance
+among the worshipping matrons on this occasion simply because his
+doing so was an outrage, and therefore exciting. Another reason was
+alleged. The rites in question were annually held, now in the house
+of this matron and then of that, and during the occasion the very
+master of the house was excluded from his own premises. They were
+now being performed under the auspices of Pompeia, the wife of
+Julius C&aelig;sar, the daughter of one Quintus Pompeius, and it
+was alleged that Clodius came among the women worshippers for the
+sake of carrying on an intrigue with C&aelig;sar's wife. This was
+highly improbable, as Mr. Forsyth has pointed out to us, and the
+idea was possibly used simply as an excuse to C&aelig;sar for
+divorcing a wife of whom he was weary. At any rate, when the
+scandal got abroad, he did divorce Pompeia, alleging that it did
+not suit C&aelig;sar to have his wife suspected.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote"><span class="smcap">b.c.</span> 61,
+&aelig;tat 46.</div>
+
+<p>The story became known through the city, and early in January
+Cicero wrote to Atticus, telling him the facts: "You have probably
+heard that Publius Clodius, the son of Appius, has been taken
+dressed in a woman's clothes in the house of Caius C&aelig;sar,
+where sacrifice was being made for the people, and that he escaped
+by the aid of a female slave. You will be sorry to hear that it has
+given rise to a great scandal."<a name="FNanchor_222_222" id=
+"FNanchor_222_222"></a><a href="#Footnote_222_222" class=
+"fnanchor">222</a> A few days afterward Cicero speaks of it again
+to Atticus at greater length, and we learn that the matter had been
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_256" id="Page_256">
+256</a></span>taken up by the magistrates with the view of
+punishing Clodius. Cicero writes without any strong feeling of his
+own, explaining to his friend that he had been at first a very
+Lycurgus in the affair, but that he is now tamed down.<a name=
+"FNanchor_223_223" id="FNanchor_223_223"></a><a href=
+"#Footnote_223_223" class="fnanchor">223</a> Then there is a
+third letter in which Cicero is indignant because certain men of
+whom he disapproves, the Consul Piso among the number<a name=
+"FNanchor_224_224" id="FNanchor_224_224"></a><a href=
+"#Footnote_224_224" class="fnanchor">224</a> are anxious to save
+this wicked young nobleman from the punishment due to him; whereas
+others of whom he approves Cato among the number, are desirous of
+seeing justice done. But it was no affair special to Cicero.
+Shortly afterward he writes again to Atticus as to the result of
+the trial&mdash;for a trial did take place&mdash;and explains to
+his friend how justice had failed. Atticus had asked him how it had
+come to pass that he, Cicero, had not exerted himself as he usually
+did.<a name="FNanchor_225_225" id="FNanchor_225_225"></a><a href=
+"#Footnote_225_225" class="fnanchor">225</a> This letter, though
+there is matter enough in it of a serious kind, yet jests with the
+Clodian affair so continually as to make us feel that he attributed
+no importance to it as regarded himself. He had exerted himself
+till Hortensius made a mistake as to the selection of the judges.
+After that he had himself given evidence. An attempt was made to
+prove an alibi, but Cicero came forward to swear that he had seen
+Clodius on the very day in question. There had, too, been an
+exchange of repartee in the Senate between himself and Clodius
+after the acquittal, of which he gives the details to his
+correspondent with considerable self-satisfaction. The passage does
+not enhance our idea of the dignity of the Senate, or of the power
+of Roman raillery. It was known that Clodius had been saved by the
+wholesale bribery of a large number of the judges. There had been
+twenty-five for condemning against thirty-one for acquittal.<a
+name="FNanchor_226_226" id="FNanchor_226_226"></a><a href=
+"#Footnote_226_226" class="fnanchor">226</a> <span class=
+'pagenum'><a name="Page_257" id="Page_257">
+257</a></span>Cicero in the Catiline affair had used a phrase with
+frequency by which he boasted that he had "found out" this and
+"found out" that&mdash;"comperisse omnia." Clodius, in the
+discussion before the trial, throws this in his teeth: "Comperisse
+omnia criminabatur." This gave rise to ill-feeling, and hurt Cicero
+much worse than the dishonor done to the Bona Dea. As for that, we
+may say that he and the Senate and the judges cared personally very
+little, although there was no doubt a feeling that it was wise to
+awe men's minds by the preservation of religious respect. Cicero
+had cared but little about the trial; but as he had been able to
+give evidence he had appeared as a witness, and enmity sprung from
+the words which were spoken both on one side and on the other.
+Clodius was acquitted, which concerns us not at all, and concerns
+Rome very little; but things had so come to pass at the trial that
+Cicero had been very bitter, and that Clodius had become his enemy.
+When a man was wanted, three years afterward, to take the lead in
+persecuting Cicero, Clodius was ready for the occasion.</p>
+
+<p>While the expediency of putting Clodius on his trial was being
+discussed, Pompey had returned from the East, and taken up his
+residence outside the city, because he was awaiting his triumph.
+The General, to whom it was given to march through the city with
+triumphal glory, was bound to make his first entrance after his
+victories with all his triumphal appendages, as though he was at
+that moment returning from the war with all his warlike spoils
+around him. The usage had obtained the strength of law, but the
+General was not on that account debarred from city employment
+during the interval. The city must be taken out to him instead of
+his coming into the city. Pompey was so great on his return from
+his Mithridatic victories that the Senate went out to sit with him
+in the suburbs, as he could not sit with it within the walls. We
+find him taking <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_258" id=
+"Page_258">258</a></span>part in these Clodian discussions.
+Cicero at once writes of him to Athens with evident
+dissatisfaction. When questioned about Clodius, Pompey had answered
+with the grand air of aristocrat. Crassus on this occasion, between
+whom and Cicero there was never much friendship, took occasion to
+belaud the late great Consul on account of his Catiline successes.
+Pompey, we are told, did not bear this well.<a name=
+"FNanchor_227_227" id="FNanchor_227_227"></a><a href=
+"#Footnote_227_227" class="fnanchor">227</a> Crassus had probably
+intended to produce some such effect. Then Cicero had spoken in
+answer to the remarks of Crassus, very glibly, no doubt, and had
+done his best to "show off" before Pompey, his new listener.<a
+name="FNanchor_228_228" id="FNanchor_228_228"></a><a href=
+"#Footnote_228_228" class="fnanchor">228</a> More than six years
+had passed since Pompey could have heard him, and then Cicero's
+voice had not become potential in the Senate. Cicero had praised
+Pompey with all the eloquence in his power. "Anteponatur omnibus
+Pompeius," he had said, in the last Catiline oration to the Senate;
+and Pompey, though he had not heard the words spoken, knew very
+well what had been said. Such oratory was never lost upon those
+whom it most concerned the orator to make acquainted with it. But
+in return for all this praise, for that Manilian oration which had
+helped to send him to the East, for continual loyalty, Pompey had
+replied to Cicero with coldness. He would now let Pompey know what
+was his standing in Rome. "If ever," he says to Atticus, "I was
+strong with my grand rhythm, with my quick rhetorical passages,
+with enthusiasm, and with logic, I was so now. Oh, the noise that I
+made on the occasion! You know what my voice can do. I need say no
+more about it, as surely you must have heard me away there in
+Epirus." The reader, I trust, will have already a sufficiently
+vivid idea of Cicero's character to understand the mingling of
+triumph and badinage, with a spark of disappointment, which is here
+expressed. "This Pompey, though I have <span class='pagenum'><a
+name="Page_259" id="Page_259">259</a></span>been so true to
+him, has not thought much of me&mdash;of me, the great Consul who
+saved Rome! He has now heard what even Crassus has been forced to
+say about me. He shall hear me too, me myself, and perhaps he will
+then know better." It was thus that Cicero's mind was at work while
+he was turning his loud periods. Pompey was sitting next to him
+listening, by no means admiring his admirer as that admirer
+expected to be admired. Cicero had probably said to himself that
+they two together, Pompey and Cicero, might suffice to preserve the
+Republic. Pompey, not thinking much of the Republic, was probably
+telling himself that he wanted no brother near the throne. When of
+two men the first thinks himself equal to the second, the second
+will generally feel himself to be superior to the first. Pompey
+would have liked Cicero better if his periods had not been so round
+nor his voice so powerful. Not that Pompey was distinctly desirous
+of any throne. His position at the moment was peculiar. He had
+brought back his victorious army from the East to Brundisium, and
+had then disbanded his legions. I will quote here the opening words
+from one of Mommsen's chapters:<a name="FNanchor_229_229" id=
+"FNanchor_229_229"></a><a href="#Footnote_229_229" class=
+"fnanchor">229</a> "When Pompeius, after having transacted the
+affairs committed to his charge, again turned his eyes toward home,
+he found, for the second time, the diadem at his feet." He says
+farther on, explaining why Pompey did not lift the diadem: "The
+very peculiar temperament of Pompeius naturally turned once more
+the scale. He was one of those men who are capable, it may be, of a
+crime, but not of insubordination." And again: "While in the
+capital all was preparation for receiving the new monarch, news
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_260" id="Page_260">
+260</a></span>came that Pompeius, when barely landed at
+Brundisium, had broken up his legions, and with a small escort had
+entered his journey to the capital. If it is a piece of
+good-fortune to gain a crown without trouble, fortune never did
+more for mortal than it did for Pompeius; but on those who lack
+courage the gods lavish every favor and every gift in vain." I must
+say here that, while I acknowledge the German historian's research
+and knowledge without any reserve, I cannot accept his deductions
+as to character. I do not believe that Pompey found any diadem at
+his feet, or thought of any diadem, nor, according to my reading of
+Roman history, had Marius or had Sulla; nor did C&aelig;sar. The
+first who thought of that perpetual rule&mdash;a rule to be
+perpetuated during the ruler's life, and to be handed down to his
+successors&mdash;was Augustus. Marius, violent, self-seeking, and
+uncontrollable, had tumbled into supreme power; and, had he not
+died, would have held it as long as he could, because it pleased
+his ambition for the moment. Sulla, with a purpose, had seized it,
+yet seems never to have got beyond the old Roman idea of a
+temporary Dictatorship. The old Roman horror of a king was present
+to these Romans, even after they had become kings. Pompey, no
+doubt, liked to be first, and when he came back from the East
+thought that by his deeds he was first, easily first. Whether
+Consul year after year, as Marius had been, or Dictator, as Sulla
+had been, or Imperator, with a running command over all the Romans,
+it was his idea still to adhere to the forms of the Republic.
+Mommsen, foreseeing&mdash;if an historian can be said to foresee
+the future from his standing-point in the past&mdash;that a master
+was to come for the Roman Empire, and giving all his sympathies to
+the C&aelig;sarean idea, despises Pompey because Pompey would not
+pick up the diadem. No such idea ever entered Pompey's head. After
+a while he "Sullaturized"&mdash;was desirous of copying
+Sulla&mdash;to use an excellent word which Cicero coined. When he
+was successfully opposed by those whom he had thought inferior to
+himself, when he found <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_261" id=
+"Page_261">261</a></span>that C&aelig;sar had got the better
+of him, and that a stronger body of Romans went with C&aelig;sar
+than with him, then proscriptions, murder, confiscations, and the
+seizing of dictatorial power presented themselves to his angry
+mind, but of permanent despotic power there was, I think, no
+thought, nor, as far as I can read the records, had such an idea
+been fixed in C&aelig;sar's bosom. To carry on the old trade of
+Pr&aelig;tor, Consul, Proconsul, and Imperator, so as to get what he
+could of power and wealth and dignity in the scramble, was, I
+think, C&aelig;sar's purpose. The rest grew upon him. As
+Shakspeare, sitting down to write a play that might serve his
+theatre, composed some Lear or Tempest&mdash;that has lived and
+will live forever, because of the genius which was unknown to
+himself&mdash;so did C&aelig;sar, by his genius, find his way to a
+power which he had not premeditated. A much longer time is
+necessary for eradicating an idea from men's minds than a fact from
+their practice. This should be proved to us by our own loyalty to
+the word "monarch," when nothing can be farther removed from a
+monarchy than our own commonwealth. From those first breaches in
+republican practice which the historian Florus dates back to the
+siege of Numantia,<a name="FNanchor_230_230" id=
+"FNanchor_230_230"></a><a href="#Footnote_230_230" class=
+"fnanchor">230</a> <span class="smcap">b.c.</span> 133, down far
+into the reign of Augustus, it took a century and a quarter to make
+the people understand that there was no longer a republican form of
+government, and to produce a leader who could himself see that
+there was room for a despot.</p>
+
+<p>Pompey had his triumph; but the same aristocratic airs which had
+annoyed Cicero had offended others. He was shorn of his honors.
+Only two days were allowed for his processions. He was irritated,
+jealous, and no doubt desirous of making his power felt; but he
+thought of no diadem. C&aelig;sar <span class='pagenum'><a name=
+"Page_262" id="Page_262">262</a></span>saw it all; and he
+thought of that conspiracy which we have since called the First
+Triumvirate.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote"><span class="smcap">b.c.</span> 62, 61.
+&aelig;tat45,46.</div>
+
+<p>The two years to which this chapter has been given were
+uneventful in Cicero's life, and produced but little of that stock
+of literature by which he has been made one of mankind's prime
+favorites. Two discourses were written and published, and probably
+spoken, which are now lost&mdash;that, namely, to the people
+against Metellus, in which, no doubt, he put forth all that he had
+intended to say when Metellus stopped him from speaking at the
+expiration of his Consulship; the second, against Clodius and
+Curio, in the Senate, in reference to the discreditable Clodian
+affair. The fragments which we have of this contain those
+asperities which he retailed afterward in his letter to Atticus,
+and are not either instructive or amusing. But we learn from these
+fragments that Clodius was already preparing that scheme for
+entering the Tribunate by an illegal repudiation of his own family
+rank, which he afterward carried out, to the great detriment of
+Cicero's happiness. Of the speeches extant on behalf of Archias and
+P. Sulla I have spoken already. We know of no others made during
+this period. We have one letter besides this to Atticus, addressed
+to Antony, his former colleague, which, like many of his letters,
+was written solely for the sake of popularity.</p>
+
+<p>During these years he lived no doubt splendidly as one of the
+great men of the greatest city in the world. He had his magnificent
+new mansion in Rome, and his various villas, which were already
+becoming noted for their elegance and charms of upholstery and
+scenic beauty. Not only had he climbed to the top of official life
+himself, but had succeeded in taking his brother Quintus up with
+him. In the second of the two years, <span class=
+"smcap">b.c.</span> 61, Quintus had been sent out as Governor or
+Propr&aelig;tor to Asia, having then nothing higher to reach than the
+Consulship, which, however, he never attained. This step in the
+life of Quintus has become famous by a letter which the <span
+class='pagenum'><a name="Page_263" id="Page_263">
+263</a></span>elder brother wrote to him in the second year of his
+office, to which reference will be made in the next chapter.</p>
+
+<p>So far all things seemed to have gone well with Cicero. He was
+high in esteem and authority, powerful, rich, and with many people
+popular. But the student of his life now begins to see that
+troubles are enveloping him. He had risen too high not to encounter
+envy, and had been too loud in his own praise not to make those who
+envied him very bitter in their malice.</p>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_264" id="Page_264">
+264</a></span></p>
+
+<h3><a name="CHAPTER_XI" id="CHAPTER_XI"></a><span class="smcap">Chapter XI.</span></h3>
+
+<h4><i>THE TRIUMVIRATE.</i></h4>
+
+<div class="sidenote"><span class="smcap">Cb.c.</span> 60, &aelig;tat 47.</div>
+
+<p>I know of no great fact in history so impalpable, so shadowy, so
+unreal, as the First Triumvirate. Every school-boy, almost every
+school-girl, knows that there was a First Triumvirate, and that it
+was a political combination made by three great Romans of the day,
+Julius C&aelig;sar, Pompey the Great, and Crassus the Rich, for
+managing Rome among them. Beyond this they know little, because
+there is little to know. That it was a conspiracy against the
+ordained government of the day, as much so as that of Catiline, or
+Guy Faux, or Napoleon III., they do not know generally, because
+C&aelig;sar, who, though the youngest of the three, was the
+mainspring of it, rose by means of it to such a galaxy of glory
+that all the steps by which he rose to it have been supposed to be
+magnificent and heroic. But of the method in which this Triumvirate
+was constructed, who has an idea? How was it first suggested,
+where, and by whom? What was it that the conspirators combined to
+do? There was no purpose of wholesale murder like that of Catiline
+for destroying the Senate, and of Guy Faux for blowing up the House
+of Lords. There was no plot arranged for silencing a body of
+legislators like that of Napoleon. In these scrambles that are
+going on every year for place and power, for provinces and plunder,
+let us help each other. If we can manage to stick fast by each
+other, we can get all the power and nearly all the plunder. That,
+said with a wink by one of the Triumvirate&mdash;C&aelig;sar, let
+us say&mdash;and assented to with a nod by Pompey and Crassus, was
+sufficient <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_265" id=
+"Page_265">265</a></span>for the construction of such a
+conspiracy as that which I presume to have been hatched when the
+First Triumvirate was formed.<a name="FNanchor_231_231" id=
+"FNanchor_231_231"></a><a href="#Footnote_231_231" class=
+"fnanchor">231</a> Mommsen, who never speaks of a Triumvirate
+under that name, except in his index,<a name="FNanchor_232_232" id=
+"FNanchor_232_232"></a><a href="#Footnote_232_232" class=
+"fnanchor">232</a> where he has permitted the word to appear for
+the guidance of persons less well instructed than himself, connects
+the transaction which we call the First Triumvirate with a former
+coalition, which he describes as having been made in (<span class=
+"smcap">b.c.</span> 71) the year before the Consulship of Pompey
+and Crassus. With that we need not concern ourselves as we are
+dealing with the life of Cicero rather than with Roman history,
+except to say that C&aelig;sar. who was the motive power of the
+second coalition, could have had no personal hand in that of 71.
+Though he had spent his early years in "harassing the aristocracy,"
+as Dean Merivale tells us, he had not been of sufficient standing
+in men's minds to be put on a par with Pompey and Crassus. When
+this First Triumvirate was formed, as the modern world generally
+calls it, or the second coalition between the democracy and the
+great military leaders, as Mommsen with greater, but not with
+perfect, accuracy describes it, C&aelig;sar no doubt had at his
+fingers' ends the history of past years. "The idea naturally
+occurred," says Mommsen, "whether * * * an alliance firmly
+based on mutual advantage might not be established between the
+democrats, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_266" id=
+"Page_266">266</a></span>with their ally, Crassus, on the one
+side, and Pompeius and the great capitalists on the other. For
+Pompeius such a coalition was certainly a political suicide."<a
+name="FNanchor_233_233" id="FNanchor_233_233"></a><a href=
+"#Footnote_233_233" class="fnanchor">233</a> The democracy here
+means C&aelig;sar. C&aelig;sar during his whole life had been
+learning that no good could come to any one from an effete Senate,
+or from republican forms which had lost all their salt. Democracy
+was in vogue with him; not, as I think, from any philanthropic
+desire for equality; not from any far-seeing view of fraternal
+citizenship under one great paternal lord&mdash;the study of
+politics had never then reached to that height&mdash;but because it
+was necessary that some one, or perhaps some two or three, should
+prevail in the coming struggle, and because he felt himself to be
+more worthy than others. He had no conscience in the matter. Money
+was to him nothing. Another man's money was the same as his
+own&mdash;or better, if he could get hold of it. That doctrine
+taught by Cicero that men are "ad justitiam natos" must have been
+to him simply absurd. Blood was to him nothing. A friend was better
+than a foe, and a live man than a dead. Blood-thirstiness was a
+passion unknown to him; but that tenderness which with us creates a
+horror of blood was equally unknown. Pleasure was sweet to him; but
+he was man enough to feel that a life of pleasure was contemptible.
+To pillage a city, to pilfer his all from a rich man, to debauch a
+friend's wife, to give over a multitude of women and children to
+slaughter, was as easy to him as to forgive an enemy. But nothing
+rankled with him, and he could forgive an enemy. Of courage he had
+that better sort which can appreciate and calculate danger, and
+then act as though there were none. Nothing was wrong to him but
+what was injudicious. He could flatter, cajole, lie, deceive, and
+rob; nay, would think it folly not to do so <span class=
+'pagenum'><a name="Page_267" id="Page_267">267</a></span>if to
+do so were expedient.<a name="FNanchor_234_234" id=
+"FNanchor_234_234"></a><a href="#Footnote_234_234" class=
+"fnanchor">234</a> In this coalition he appears as supporting and
+supported by the people. Therefore Mommsen speaks of him as "the
+democrat." Crassus is called the ally of the democrats. It will be
+enough for us here to know that Crassus had achieved his position
+in the Senate by his enormous wealth, and that it was because of
+his wealth, which was essential to C&aelig;sar, that he was
+admitted into the league. By means of his wealth he had risen to
+power and had conquered and killed Spartacus, of the honor and
+glory of which Pompey robbed him. Then he had been made Consul.
+When C&aelig;sar had gone as Propr&aelig;tor to Spain, Crassus had found
+the money. Now C&aelig;sar had come back, and was hand and glove
+with Crassus. When the division of the spoil came, some years
+afterward&mdash;the spoil won by the Triumvirate&mdash;when
+C&aelig;sar had half perfected his grand achievements in Gaul, and
+Crassus had as yet been only a second time Consul, he got himself
+to be sent into Syria, that by conquering the Parthians he might
+make himself equal to C&aelig;sar. We know how he and his son
+perished there, each of them probably avoiding the last extremity
+of misery to a Roman&mdash;that of falling into the hands of a
+barbarian enemy&mdash;by destroying himself. Than the life of
+Crassus nothing could be more contemptible; than the death nothing
+more pitiable. "For Pompeius," says Mommsen, "such a coalition was
+certainly a political suicide." As events turned out it became so,
+because <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_268" id="Page_268">
+268</a></span>C&aelig;sar was the stronger man of the two; but it
+is intelligible that at that time Pompey should have felt that he
+could not lord it over the Senate, as he wished to do, without aid
+from the democratic party. He had no well-defined views, but he
+wished to be the first man in Rome. He regarded himself as still
+greatly superior to C&aelig;sar, who as yet had been no more than
+Pr&aelig;tor, and at this time was being balked of his triumph because
+he could not at one and the same moment be in the city, as
+candidate for the Consulship, and out of the city waiting for his
+triumph. Pompey had triumphed three times, had been Consul at an
+unnaturally early age with abnormal honors, had been victorious
+east and west, and was called "Magnus." He did not as yet fear to
+be overshadowed by C&aelig;sar.<a name="FNanchor_235_235" id=
+"FNanchor_235_235"></a><a href="#Footnote_235_235" class=
+"fnanchor">235</a> Cicero was his bugbear.</p>
+
+<p>Mommsen I believe to be right in eschewing the word
+"Triumvirate." I know no mention of it by any Roman writer as
+applied to this conspiracy, though Tacitus, Suetonius, and Florus
+call by that name the later coalition of Octavius, Antony, and
+Lepidus. The Langhornes, in translating Plutarch's life of Crassus,
+speak of the Triumvirate; but Plutarch himself says that
+C&aelig;sar combined "an impregnable stronghold" by joining the
+three men.<a name="FNanchor_236_236" id="FNanchor_236_236"></a><a
+href="#Footnote_236_236" class="fnanchor">236</a> Paterculus and
+Suetonius<a name="FNanchor_237_237" id="FNanchor_237_237"></a><a
+href="#Footnote_237_237" class="fnanchor">237</a> explain very
+clearly the nature of the compact, but do <span class='pagenum'><a
+name="Page_269" id="Page_269">269</a></span>not use the term.
+There was nothing in the conspiracy entitling it to any official
+appellation, though, as there were three leading conspirators, that
+which has been used has been so far appropriate.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote"><span class="smcap">b.c.</span> 60,
+&aelig;tat 47.</div>
+
+<p>Cicero was the bugbear to them all. That he might have been one
+of them, if ready to share the plunder and the power, no reader of
+the history of the time can doubt. Had he so chosen he might again
+have been a "real power in the State;" but to become so in the way
+proposed to him it was necessary that he should join others in a
+conspiracy against the Republic.</p>
+
+<p>I do not wish it to be supposed that Cicero received the
+overtures made to him with horror. Conspiracies were too common for
+horror; and these conspirators were all our Cicero's friends in one
+sense, though in another they might be his opponents. We may
+imagine that at first Crassus had nothing to do with the matter,
+and that Pompey would fain have stood aloof in his jealousy. But
+C&aelig;sar knew that it was well to have Cicero, if Cicero was to
+be had. It was not only his eloquence which was marvellously
+powerful, or his energy which had been shown to be indomitable:
+there was his character, surpassed by that of no Roman living; if
+only, in giving them the use of his character, he could be got to
+disregard the honor and the justice and the patriotism on which his
+character had been founded. How valuable may character be made, if
+it can be employed under such conditions! To be believed because of
+your truth, and yet to lie; to be trusted for your honesty, and yet
+to cheat; to have credit for patriotism, and yet to sell your
+country! The temptations to do this are rarely put before a man
+plainly, in all their naked ugliness. They certainly <span class=
+'pagenum'><a name="Page_270" id="Page_270">270</a></span>were
+not so presented to Cicero by C&aelig;sar and his associates. The
+bait was held out to him, as it is daily to others, in a form not
+repellent, with words fitted to deceive and powerful almost to
+persuade. Give us the advantage of your character, and then by your
+means we shall be able to save our country. Though our line of
+action may not be strictly constitutional, if you will look into it
+you will see that it is expedient. What other course is there? How
+else shall any wreck of the Republic be preserved? Would you be
+another Cato, useless and impractical? Join us, and save Rome to
+some purpose. We can understand that in such way was the lure held
+out to Cicero, as it has been to many a politician since. But when
+the politician takes the office offered to him&mdash;and the pay,
+though it be but that of a Lord of the Treasury&mdash;he must vote
+with his party.</p>
+
+<p>That Cicero doubted much whether he would or would not at this
+time throw in his lot with C&aelig;sar and Pompey is certain. To be
+of real use&mdash;not to be impractical, as was Cato&mdash;to save
+his country and rise honestly in power and glory&mdash;not to be
+too straitlaced, not over-scrupulous&mdash;giving and taking a
+little, so that he might work to good purpose with others in
+harness&mdash;that was his idea of duty as a Roman. To serve in
+accord with Pompey was the first dream of his political life, and
+now Pompey was in accord with C&aelig;sar. It was natural that he
+should doubt&mdash;natural that he should express his doubts. Who
+should receive them but Atticus, that "alter ego?" Cicero doubted
+whether he should cling to Pompey&mdash;as he did in every phase of
+his political life, till Pompey had perished at the mouth of the
+Nile. But at last he saw his way clear to honesty, as I think he
+always did. He tells his friend that C&aelig;sar had sent his
+confidential messenger, Balbus, to sound him. The present question
+is whether he shall resist a certain agrarian law of which he does
+not approve, but which is supported by both Pompey and C&aelig;sar,
+or retire from the contest and enjoy himself at his country villas,
+or boldly stay <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_271" id=
+"Page_271">271</a></span>at Rome and oppose the law.
+C&aelig;sar assures him that if he will come over to them,
+C&aelig;sar will be always true to him and Pompey, and will do his
+best to bring Crassus into the same frame of mind. Then he reckons
+up all the good things which would accrue to him: "Closest
+friendship with Pompey&mdash;with C&aelig;sar also, should he wish
+it; the making up of all quarrels with his enemies; popularity with
+the people; ease for his old age, which was coming on him. But that
+conclusion moves me to which I came in my third book."<a name=
+"FNanchor_238_238" id="FNanchor_238_238"></a><a href=
+"#Footnote_238_238" class="fnanchor">238</a> Then he repeats the
+lines given in the note below, which he had written, probably this
+very year, in a poem composed in honor of his own Consulship. The
+lines are not in themselves grand, but the spirit of them is
+magnificent: "Stick to the good cause which in your early youth you
+chose for yourself, and be true to the party you have made your
+own." "Should I doubt when the muse herself has so written," he
+says, alluding to the name of Calliope, given to this third book of
+his. Then he adds a line of Homer, very excellent for the
+occasion:<a name="FNanchor_239_239" id="FNanchor_239_239"></a><a
+href="#Footnote_239_239" class="fnanchor">239</a> "No augury for
+the future can be better for you than that which bids you serve
+your country." "But," he says, "we will talk of all that when you
+come to me for the holidays. Your bath shall be ready for you: your
+sister and mother shall be of the party." And so the doubts are
+settled.</p>
+
+<p>Now came on the question of the Tribuneship of Clodius, in
+reference to which I will quote a passage out of Middleton, <span
+class='pagenum'><a name="Page_272" id="Page_272">
+272</a></span>because the phrase which he uses exactly explains
+the purposes of C&aelig;sar and Pompey.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote"><span class="smcap">b.c.</span> 60,
+&aelig;tat 47.</div>
+
+<p>"Clodius, who had been contriving all this while how to revenge
+himself on Cicero, began now to give an opening to the scheme which
+he had formed for that purpose. His project was to get himself
+chosen Tribune, and in that office to drive him out of the city, by
+the publication of a law which, by some stratagem or other, he
+hoped to obtrude on the people. But as all Patricians were
+incapable of the Tribunate, by its original institution so his
+first step was to make himself a Plebeian by the pretence of an
+adoption into a Plebeian house, which could not yet be done without
+the suffrage of the people. This case was wholly new, and contrary
+to all the forms&mdash;wanting every condition, and serving none of
+the ends which were required in regular adoptions&mdash;so that, on
+the first proposal, it seemed too extravagant to be treated
+seriously, and would soon have been hissed off with scorn, had it
+not been concerted and privately supported by persons of much more
+weight than Clodius. C&aelig;sar was at the bottom of it, and
+Pompey secretly favored it&mdash;not that they intended to ruin
+Cicero, but to keep him only under the lash&mdash;and if they could
+not draw him into their measures, to make him at least sit quiet,
+and let Clodius loose upon him."<a name="FNanchor_240_240" id=
+"FNanchor_240_240"></a><a href="#Footnote_240_240" class=
+"fnanchor">240</a></p>
+
+<p>This, no doubt, was the intention of the political leaders in
+Rome at this conjunction of affairs. It had been found impossible
+to draw Cicero gently into the net, so that he should become one of
+them. If he would live quietly at his Antian or Tusculan villa,
+amid his books and writings, he should be treated with all respect;
+he should be borne with, even though he talked so much of his own
+Consulate. But if he would interfere with the politics of the day,
+and would not come into the net, then he must be dealt with.
+C&aelig;sar seems to have respected Cicero always, and even to have
+liked him; but he <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_273" id=
+"Page_273">273</a></span>was not minded to put up with a
+"friend" in Rome who from day to day abused all his projects. In
+defending Antony, the Macedonian Proconsul who was condemned,
+Cicero made some unpleasant remarks on the then condition of
+things. C&aelig;sar, we are told, when he heard of this, on the
+very spur of the moment, caused Clodius to be accepted as a
+Plebeian.</p>
+
+<p>In all this we are reminded of the absolute truth of Mommsen's
+verdict on Rome, which I have already quoted more than once: "On
+the Roman oligarchy of this period no judgment can be passed, save
+one of inexorable and remorseless condemnation." How had it come to
+pass that C&aelig;sar had the power of suddenly causing an edict to
+become law, whether for good or for evil? Cicero's description of
+what took place is as follows:<a name="FNanchor_241_241" id=
+"FNanchor_241_241"></a><a href="#Footnote_241_241" class=
+"fnanchor">241</a> "About the sixth hour of the day, when I was
+defending my colleague Antony in court, I took occasion to complain
+of certain things which were being done in the Republic, and which
+I thought to be injurious to my poor client. Some dishonest persons
+carried my words to men in power"&mdash;meaning C&aelig;sar and
+Pompey&mdash;"not, indeed, my own words, but words very different
+from mine. At the ninth hour on that very same day, you, Clodius,
+were accepted as a Plebeian." C&aelig;sar, having been given to
+understand that Cicero had been making himself disagreeable, was
+determined not to put up with it. Suetonius tells the same story
+with admirable simplicity. Of Suetonius it must be said that, if he
+had no sympathy for a patriot such as Cicero, neither had he any
+desire to represent in rosy colors the despotism of a C&aelig;sar.
+He tells his stories simply as he has heard them. "Cicero," says
+Suetonius,<a name="FNanchor_242_242" id="FNanchor_242_242"></a><a
+href="#Footnote_242_242" class="fnanchor">242</a> "having at some
+trial complained of the state of the times, C&aelig;sar, on the
+very same day, at the ninth hour, passed <span class='pagenum'><a
+name="Page_274" id="Page_274">274</a></span>Clodius over from
+the Patrician to the Plebeian rank, in accordance with his own
+desire." How did it come to pass that C&aelig;sar, who, though
+Consul at the time, had no recognized power of that nature, was
+efficacious for any such work as this? Because the Republic had
+come to the condition which the German historian has described. The
+conspiracy between C&aelig;sar and his subordinates had not been
+made for nothing. The reader will require to know why Clodius
+should have desired degradation, and how it came to pass that this
+degradation should have been fatal to Cicero. The story has been
+partly told in the passage from Middleton. A Patrician, in
+accordance with the constitution, could not be a Tribune of the
+people. From the commencement of the Tribunate, that office had
+been reserved for the Plebeians. But a Tribune had a power of
+introducing laws which exceeded that of any Senator or any other
+official. "They had acquired the right," we are told in Smith's
+Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities, "of proposing to the
+comitia tributa, or to the Senate, measures on nearly all the
+important affairs of the State;" and as matters stood at this time,
+no one Tribune could "veto" or put an arbitrary stop to a
+proposition from another. When such proposition was made, it was
+simply for the people to decide by their votes whether it should or
+should not be law. The present object was to have a proposition
+made and carried suddenly, in reference to Cicero, which should
+have, at any rate, the effect of stopping his mouth. This could be
+best done by a Tribune of the people. No other adequate Tribune
+could be found&mdash;no Plebeian so incensed against Cicero as to
+be willing to do this, possessing at the same time power enough to
+be elected. Therefore it was that Clodius was so anxious to be
+degraded.</p>
+
+<p>No Patrician could become a Tribune of the people; but a
+Patrician might be adopted by a Plebeian, and the adopted child
+would take the rank of his father&mdash;would, in fact, for all
+legal purposes, be the same as a son. For doing this in any <span
+class='pagenum'><a name="Page_275" id="Page_275">
+275</a></span>case a law had to be passed&mdash;or, in other
+words, the assent of the people must be obtained and registered.
+But many conditions were necessary. The father intending to adopt
+must have no living son of his own, and must be past the time of
+life at which he might naturally hope to have one; and the adopted
+son must be of a fitting age to personate a son&mdash;at any rate,
+must be younger than the father; nothing must be done injurious to
+either family; there must be no trick in it, no looking after other
+result than that plainly intended. All these conditions were
+broken. The pretended father, Fonteius, had a family of his own,
+and was younger than Clodius. The great Claudian family was
+desecrated, and there was no one so ignorant as not to know that
+the purpose intended was that of entering the Tribunate by a fraud.
+It was required by the general law that the Sacred College should
+report as to the proper observances of the prescribed regulations,
+but no priest was ever consulted. Yet Clodius was adopted, made a
+Plebeian, and in the course of the year elected as Tribune.</p>
+
+<p>In reading all this, the reader is mainly struck by the
+wonderful admixture of lawlessness and law-abiding steadfastness.
+If C&aelig;sar, who was already becoming a tyrant in his
+Consulship, chose to make use of this means of silencing Cicero,
+why not force Clodius into the Tribunate without so false and
+degrading a ceremony? But if, as was no doubt the case, he was not
+yet strong enough to ignore the old popular feelings on the
+subject, how was it that he was able to laugh in his sleeve at the
+laws, and to come forth at a moment's notice and cause the people
+to vote, legally or illegally, just as he pleased? It requires no
+conjurer to tell us the reason. The outside hulls and husks remain
+when the rich fruit has gone. It was in seeing this, and yet not
+quite believing that it must be so, that the agony of Cicero's life
+consisted. There could have been no hope for freedom, no hope for
+the Republic, when Rome had been governed as it was during the
+Consulship of C&aelig;sar; but Cicero could still hope, though
+faintly, and <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_276" id=
+"Page_276">276</a></span>still buoy himself up with
+remembrances of his own year of office.</p>
+
+<p>In carrying on the story of the newly-adopted child to his
+election as Tribune, I have gone beyond the time of my narration,
+so that the reader may understand the cause and nature and effect
+of the anger which Clodius entertained for Cicero. This originated
+in the bitter words spoken as to the profanation of the Bona Dea,
+and led to the means for achieving Cicero's exile and other
+untoward passages of his life. In the year 60 <span class=
+"smcap">b.c.</span>, when Metellus Celer and Afranius were Consuls,
+Clodius was tried for insulting the Bona Dea, and the since
+so-called Triumvirate was instituted. It has already been shown
+that Cicero, not without many doubts, rejected the first offers
+which were made to him to join the forces that were so united. He
+seems to have passed the greater portion of this year in Rome. One
+letter only was written from the country, to Atticus, from his
+Tusculan villa, and that is of no special moment. He spent his time
+in the city, still engaged in the politics of the day; as to which,
+though he dreaded the coming together of C&aelig;sar and Pompey and
+Crassus&mdash;those "graves principum amicitias" which were to
+become so detrimental to all who were concerned in them&mdash;he
+foresaw as yet but little of the evil which was to fall upon his
+own head. He was by no means idle as to literature, though we have
+but little of what he wrote, and do not regret what we have lost.
+He composed a memoir of his Consulate in Greek, which he sent to
+Atticus with an allusion to his own use of the foreign language
+intended to show that he is quite at ease in that matter. Atticus
+had sent him a memoir, also written in Greek, on the same subject,
+and the two packets had crossed each other on the road. He candidly
+tells Atticus that his attempt seems to be "horridula atque
+incompta," rough and unpolished; whereas Posidonius, the great
+Greek critic of Rhodes who had been invited by him, Cicero, to read
+the memoir, and then himself to treat the same subject, had replied
+that he was altogether debarred <span class='pagenum'><a name=
+"Page_277" id="Page_277">277</a></span>from such an attempt by
+the excellence of his correspondent's performance.<a name=
+"FNanchor_243_243" id="FNanchor_243_243"></a><a href=
+"#Footnote_243_243" class="fnanchor">243</a> He also wrote three
+books of a poem on his Consulate, and sent them to Atticus; of
+which we have a fragment of seventy-five lines quoted by himself,<a
+name="FNanchor_244_244" id="FNanchor_244_244"></a><a href=
+"#Footnote_244_244" class="fnanchor">244</a> and four or five
+other lines including that unfortunate verse handed down by
+Quintilian, "O fortunatum natam me consule Romam"&mdash;unless,
+indeed, it be spurious, as is suggested by that excellent critic
+and whole-hearted friend of the orator's, M. Gueroult. Previous to
+these he had produced in hexameters, also, a translation of the
+Prognostics of Aratus. This is the second part of a poem on the
+heavenly bodies, the first part, the Ph&aelig;nomena, having been turned
+into Latin verse by him when he was eighteen. Of the Prognostics we
+have only a few lines preserved by Priscian, and a passage repeated
+by the author, also in his De Divinatione. I think that Cicero was
+capable of producing a poem quite worthy of preservation; but in
+the work of this year the subjects chosen were not alluring.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote"><span class="smcap">b.c.</span> 60,
+&aelig;tat 47.</div>
+
+<p>Among his epistles of the year there is one which might of
+itself have sufficed to bring down his name to posterity. This is a
+long letter, full of advice, to his brother Quintus, who had gone
+out in the previous year to govern the province of Asia as
+Propr&aelig;tor. We may say that good advice could never have been more
+wanted, and that better advice could not have been given. It has
+been suggested that it was written as a companion to that treatise
+on the duties of a candidate which Quintus composed for his
+brother's service when standing for his Consulship. But I cannot
+admit the analogy. The composition attributed to Quintus contained
+lessons of advice equally suitable to any candidate, sprung from
+the people, striving to rise to high honors in the State. <span
+class='pagenum'><a name="Page_278" id="Page_278">
+278</a></span>This letter is adapted not only to the special
+position of Quintus, but to the peculiarities of his character, and
+its strength lies in this: that while the one brother praises the
+other, justly praises him, as I believe, for many virtues, so as to
+make the receipt of it acceptable, it points out
+faults&mdash;faults which will become fatal, if not
+amended&mdash;in language which is not only strong but
+unanswerable.</p>
+
+<p>The style of this letter is undoubtedly very different from that
+of Cicero's letters generally&mdash;so as to suggest to the reader
+that it must have been composed expressly for publication whereas
+the daily correspondence is written "currente calamo," with no
+other than the immediate idea of amusing, instructing, or perhaps
+comforting the correspondent. Hence has come the comparison between
+this and the treatise De Petitione Consulatus. I think that the
+gravity of the occasion, rather than any regard for posterity,
+produced the change of style. Cicero found it to be essential to
+induce his brother to remain at his post, not to throw up his
+government in disgust, and so to bear himself that he should not
+make himself absolutely odious to his own staff and to other Romans
+around him; for Quintus Cicero, though he had been proud and
+arrogant and ill tempered, had not made himself notorious by the
+ordinary Roman propensity to plunder his province "What is it that
+is required of you as a governor?"<a name="FNanchor_245_245" id=
+"FNanchor_245_245"></a><a href="#Footnote_245_245" class=
+"fnanchor">245</a> asks Cicero. "That men should not be
+frightened by your journeys hither and thither&mdash;that they
+should not be eaten up by your extravagance&mdash;that they should
+not be disturbed by your coming among them&mdash;<span class=
+'pagenum'><a name="Page_279" id="Page_279">279</a></span>that
+there should be joy at your approach; when each city should think
+that its guardian angel, not a cruel master, had come upon
+it&mdash;when each house should feel that it entertained not a
+robber but a friend. Practice has made you perfect in this. But it
+is not enough that you should exercise those good offices yourself,
+but that you should take care that every one of those who come with
+you should seem to do his best for the inhabitants of the province,
+for the citizen of Rome, and for the Republic." I wish that I could
+give the letter entire&mdash;both in English, that all readers
+might know how grand are the precepts taught, and in Latin, that
+they who understand the language might appreciate the beauty of the
+words&mdash;but I do not dare to fill my pages at such length. A
+little farther on he gives his idea of the duty of all those who
+have power over others&mdash;even over the dumb animals.<a name=
+"FNanchor_246_246" id="FNanchor_246_246"></a><a href=
+"#Footnote_246_246" class="fnanchor">246</a> "To me it seems that
+the duty of those in authority over others consists in making those
+who are under them as happy as the nature of things will allow.
+Every one knows that you have acted on this principle since you
+first went to Asia." This, I fear, must be taken as flattery,
+intended to gild the pill which comes afterward "This is not only
+his duty who has under him allies and citizens, but is also that of
+the man who has slaves under his control, and even dumb cattle,
+that he should study the welfare of all over whom he stands in the
+position of master!" Let the reader look into this, and ask himself
+what precepts of Christianity have ever surpassed it.</p>
+
+<p>Then he points out that which he describes as the one great
+difficulty in the career of a Roman Provincial Governor.<a name=
+"FNanchor_247_247" id="FNanchor_247_247"></a><a href=
+"#Footnote_247_247" class="fnanchor">247</a> The <span class=
+'pagenum'><a name="Page_280" id="Page_280">
+280</a></span>collectors of taxes, or "publicani," were of the
+equestrian order. This business of farming the taxes had been their
+rich privilege for at any rate more than a century, and as Cicero
+says, farther on in his letter, it was impossible not to know with
+what hardship the Greek allies would be treated by them when so
+many stories were current of their cruelty even in Italy. Were
+Quintus to take a part against these tax-gatherers, he would make
+them hostile not only to the Republic but to himself also, and also
+to his brother Marcus; for they were of the equestrian order, and
+specially connected with these "publicani" by family ties. He
+implies, as he goes on, that it will be easier to teach the Greeks
+to be submissive than the tax-gatherers to be moderate. After all,
+where would the Greeks of Asia be if they had no Roman master to
+afford them protection? He leaves the matter in the hands of his
+brother, with advice that he should do the best he can on one side
+and on the other. If possible, let the greed of the "publicani" be
+restrained; but let the ally be taught to understand that there may
+be usage in the world worse even than Roman taxation. It would be
+hardly worth our while to allude to this part of Cicero's advice,
+did it not give an insight into the mode in which Rome taxed her
+subject people.</p>
+
+<p>After this he commences that portion of the letter for the sake
+of which we cannot but believe that the whole was written. "There
+is one thing," he says, "which I will never cease to din into your
+ears, because I could not endure to think that, amid the praises
+which are lavished on you, there should be any matter in which you
+should be found wanting. All who come to us here"&mdash;all who
+come to Rome from Asia, that is&mdash;"when they tell us of your
+honesty and goodness of heart, tell us also that you fail in
+temper. It is a vice which, in the daily affairs of private life,
+betokens a weak and unmanly spirit; but there can be nothing so
+poor as the exhibition of the littleness of nature in those who
+have risen to the dignity of command." He will not, he goes on to
+say, trouble <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_281" id=
+"Page_281">281</a></span>his brother with repeating all that
+the wise men have said on the subject of anger; he is sure that
+Quintus is well acquainted with all that. But is it not a pity,
+when all men say that nothing could be pleasanter than Quintus
+Cicero when in a good-humor, the same Quintus should allow himself
+to be so provoked that his want of kindly manners should be
+regretted by all around him? "I cannot assert," he goes on to say,
+"that when nature has produced a certain condition of mind, and
+that years as they run on have strengthened it, a man can change
+all that and pluck out from his very self the habits that have
+grown within him; yet I must tell you that if you cannot eschew
+this evil altogether&mdash;if you cannot protect yourself against
+the feeling of anger, yet you should prepare yourself to be ready
+for it when it comes, so that, when your very soul within you is
+hot with it, your tongue, at any rate, may be restrained." Then
+toward the end of the letter there is a fraternal exhortation which
+is surely very fine: "Since chance has thrown into my way the
+duties of official life in Rome, and into yours that of
+administrating provincial government, if I, in the performance of
+my work, have been second to none, do you see that you in yours may
+be equally efficient." How grand, from an elder brother to a
+younger! "And remember this, that you and I have not to strive
+after some excellence still unattained, but have to be on our watch
+to guard that which has been already won. If I should find myself
+in anything divided from you, I should desire no further advance in
+life. Unless your deeds and your words go on all-fours with mine, I
+should feel that I had achieved nothing by all the work and all the
+dangers which you and I have encountered together." The brother at
+last was found to be a poor, envious, ill-conditioned
+creature&mdash;intellectually gifted, and capable of borrowing
+something from his brother's nobler nature; but when struggles
+came, and political feuds, and the need of looking about to see on
+which side safety lay, ready to sacrifice his brother for the sake
+of safety. But up to this time <span class='pagenum'><a name=
+"Page_282" id="Page_282">282</a></span>Marcus was prepared to
+believe all good of Quintus; and having made for himself and for
+the family a great name, was desirous of sharing it with his
+brother, and, as we shall afterward see, with his brother's son,
+and with his own. In this he failed. He lived to know that he had
+failed as regarded his brother and his nephew. It was not, however,
+added to his misery to live to learn how little his son was to do
+to maintain the honor of his family.</p>
+
+<p>I find a note scribbled by myself some years ago in a volume in
+which I had read this epistle, "Probably the most beautiful letter
+ever written." Reading it again subsequently, I added another note,
+"The language altogether different from that of his ordinary
+letters." I do not dissent now either from the enthusiastic praise
+or the more careful criticism. The letter was from the man's
+heart&mdash;true, affectionate, and full of anxious, brotherly
+duty&mdash;but written in studied language, befitting, as Cicero
+thought, the need and the dignity of the occasion.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">B C 59, &aelig;tat 48.</div>
+
+<p>The year following was that of C&aelig;sar's first Consulship,
+which he held in conjunction with Bibulus, a man who was altogether
+opposed to him in thought, in character, and in action. So hostile
+were these two great officers to each other that the one attempted
+to undo whatever the other did. Bibulus was elected by bribery, on
+behalf of the Senate, in order that he might be a counterpoise to
+C&aelig;sar. But C&aelig;sar now was not only C&aelig;sar: he was
+C&aelig;sar, Pompey, and Crassus united, with all their dependents,
+all their clients, all their greedy hangers-on. To give this
+compact something of the strength of family union, Pompey, who was
+now nearly fifty years of age, took in marriage C&aelig;sar's
+daughter Julia, who was a quarter of a century his junior. But
+Pompey was a man who could endear himself to women, and the opinion
+seems to be general that had not Julia died in childbirth the
+friendship between the men would have been more lasting. But for
+C&aelig;sar's purposes the duration of this year and the next was
+enough. Bibulus was a laughing-stock, the mere shadow <span class=
+'pagenum'><a name="Page_283" id="Page_283">283</a></span>of a
+Consul, when opposed to such an enemy. He tried to use all the old
+forms of the Republic with the object of stopping C&aelig;sar in
+his career; but C&aelig;sar only ridiculed him; and Pompey, though
+we can imagine that he did not laugh much, did as C&aelig;sar would
+have him. Bibulus was an augur, and observed the heavens when
+political man&oelig;uvres were going on which he wished to stop. This
+was the old Roman system for using religion as a drag upon
+progressive movements. No work of state could be carried on if the
+heavens were declared to be unpropitious; and an augur could always
+say that the heavens were unpropitious if he pleased. This was the
+recognized constitutional mode of obstruction, and was quite in
+accord with the feelings of the people. Pompey alone, or Crassus
+with him, would certainly have submitted to an augur; but
+C&aelig;sar was above augurs. Whatever he chose to have carried he
+carried, with what approach he could to constitutional usage, but
+with whatever departure from constitutional usage he found to be
+necessary.</p>
+
+<p>What was the condition of the people of Rome at the time it is
+difficult to learn from the conflicting statements of historians.
+That Cicero had till lately been popular we know. We are told that
+Bibulus was popular when he opposed C&aelig;sar. Of personal
+popularity up to this time I doubt whether C&aelig;sar had achieved
+much. Yet we learn that, when Bibulus with Cato and Lucullus
+endeavored to carry out their constitutional threats, they were
+dragged and knocked about, and one of them nearly killed. Of the
+illegality of C&aelig;sar's proceedings there can be no doubt. "The
+tribunitian veto was interposed; C&aelig;sar contented himself with
+disregarding it."<a name="FNanchor_248_248" id=
+"FNanchor_248_248"></a><a href="#Footnote_248_248" class=
+"fnanchor">248</a> This is quoted from the German historian, who
+intends to leave an impression that C&aelig;sar was great and wise
+in all that he did; and who tells us also of the "obstinate, weak
+creature Bibulus," and of "the dogmatical fool Cato." I doubt
+whether there was anything <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_284"
+id="Page_284">284</a></span>of true popular ferment, or that
+there was any commotion except that which was made by the "roughs"
+who had attached themselves for pay to C&aelig;sar or to Pompey, or
+to Crassus, or, as it might be, to Bibulus and the other leaders.
+The violence did not amount to more than "nearly" killing this man
+or the other. Some Roman street fights were no doubt more
+bloody&mdash;as for instance that in which, seven years afterward,
+Clodius was slaughtered by Milo&mdash;but the blood was made to
+flow, not by the people, but by hired bravoes. The Roman citizens
+of the day were, I think, very quiescent. Neither pride nor misery
+stirred them much. C&aelig;sar, perceiving this, was aware that he
+might disregard Bibulus and his auguries so long as he had a band
+of ruffians around him sufficient for the purposes of the hour. It
+was in order that he might thus prevail that the coalition had been
+made with Pompey and Crassus. His colleague Bibulus, seeing how
+matters were going, retired to his own house, and there went
+through a farce of consular enactments. C&aelig;sar carried all his
+purposes, and the people were content to laugh, dividing him into
+two personages, and talking of Julius and C&aelig;sar as the two
+Consuls of the year. It was in this way that he procured to be
+allotted to him by the people his irregular command in Gaul. He was
+to be Proconsul, not for one year, with perhaps a prolongation for
+two or three, but for an established period of five. He was to have
+the great province of Cisalpine Gaul&mdash;that is to say, the
+whole of what we now call Italy, from the foot of the Alps down to
+a line running from sea to sea just north of Florence. To this
+Transalpine Gaul was afterward added. The province so named,
+possessed at the time by the Romans, was called "Narbonensis," a
+country comparatively insignificant, running from the Alps to the
+Pyrenees along the Mediterranean. The Gaul or Gallia of which
+C&aelig;sar speaks when, in the opening words of his Commentary, he
+tells us that it was divided into three parts, was altogether
+beyond the Roman province which was assigned to him. C&aelig;sar,
+when he undertook his government, can hardly <span class=
+'pagenum'><a name="Page_285" id="Page_285">285</a></span>have
+dreamed of subjecting to Roman rule the vast territories which were
+then known as Gallia, beyond the frontiers of the Empire, and which
+we now call France.</p>
+
+<p>But he caused himself to be supported by an enormous army. There
+were stationed three legions on the Italian side of the Alps, and
+one on the other. These were all to be under his command for five
+years certain, and amounted to a force of not less than thirty
+thousand men. "As no troops could constitutionally be stationed in
+Italy proper, the commander of the legions of Northern Italy and
+Gaul," says Mommsen, "dominated at the same time Italy and Rome for
+the next five years; and he who was master for five years was
+master for life."<a name="FNanchor_249_249" id=
+"FNanchor_249_249"></a><a href="#Footnote_249_249" class=
+"fnanchor">249</a></p>
+
+<div class="sidenote"><span class="smcap">b.c.</span> 59,
+&aelig;tat 48.</div>
+
+<p>Such was the condition of Rome during the second year of the
+Triumvirate, in which C&aelig;sar was Consul and prepared the way
+for the powers which he afterward exercised. Cicero would not come
+to his call; and therefore, as we are told, Clodius was let loose
+upon him. As he would not come to C&aelig;sar's call, it was
+necessary that he should be suppressed, and Clodius,
+notwithstanding all constitutional difficulties&mdash;nay,
+impossibilities&mdash;was made Tribune of the people. Things had
+now so far advanced with a C&aelig;sar that a Cicero who would not
+come to his call must be disposed of after some fashion.</p>
+
+<p>Till we have thought much of it, often of it, till we have
+looked thoroughly into it, we find ourselves tempted to marvel at
+Cicero's blindness. Surely a man so gifted must have known enough
+of the state of Rome to have been aware that there was no room left
+for one honest, patriotic, constitutional politician. Was it not
+plain to him that if, "natus ad justitiam," he could not bring
+himself to serve with those who were intent on discarding the
+Republic, he had better retire among his books, his busts, and his
+literary luxuries, and leave the government <span class=
+'pagenum'><a name="Page_286" id="Page_286">286</a></span>of
+the country to those who understood its people? And we are the more
+prone to say and to think all this because the man himself
+continually said it, and continually thought it. In one of the
+letters written early in the year<a name="FNanchor_250_250" id=
+"FNanchor_250_250"></a><a href="#Footnote_250_250" class=
+"fnanchor">250</a> to Atticus from his villa at Antium he
+declares very plainly how it is with him; and this, too, in a
+letter written in good-humor, not in a despondent frame of mind, in
+which he is able pleasantly to ridicule his enemy Clodius, who it
+seems had expressed a wish to go on an embassy to Tigranes, King of
+Armenia. "Do not think," he says, "that I am complaining of all
+this because I myself am desirous of being engaged in public
+affairs. Even while it was mine to sit at the helm I was tired of
+the work; but now, when I am in truth driven out of the ship, when
+the rudder has not been thrown down but seized out of my hands, how
+should I take a pleasure in looking from the shore at the wrecks
+which these other pilots have made?" But the study of human nature
+tells us, and all experience, that men are unable to fathom their
+own desires, and fail to govern themselves by the wisdom which is
+at their fingers' ends. The retiring Prime-minister cannot but
+hanker after the seals and the ribbons and the titles of office,
+even though his soul be able to rise above considerations of
+emolument, and there will creep into a man's mind an idea that,
+though reform of abuses from other sources may be impossible, if he
+were there once more the evil could at least be mitigated, might
+possibly be cured. So it was during this period of his life with
+Cicero. He did believe that political justice exercised by himself,
+with such assistance as his eloquence would obtain for it, might be
+efficacious for preserving the Republic, in spite of C&aelig;sar,
+and of Pompey, and of Crassus. He did not yet believe that these
+men would consent to such an outrage as his banishment. It <span
+class='pagenum'><a name="Page_287" id="Page_287">
+287</a></span>must have been incredible to him that Pompey should
+assent to it. When the blow came, it crushed him for the time. But
+he retricked his beams and struggled on to the end, as we shall see
+if we follow his life to the close.</p>
+
+<p>Such was the intended purpose of the degradation of Clodius.
+This, however, was not at once declared. It was said that Clodius
+as Tribune intended rather to oppose C&aelig;sar than to assist
+him. He at any rate chose that Cicero should so believe and sent
+Curio, a young man to whom Cicero was attached, to visit the orator
+at his villa at Antium and to declare these friendly purposes.
+According to the story told by Cicero,<a name="FNanchor_251_251"
+id="FNanchor_251_251"></a><a href="#Footnote_251_251" class=
+"fnanchor">251</a> Clodius was prepared to oppose the
+Triumvirate; and the other young men of Rome, the <i>jeunesse
+dor&eacute;e</i>, of which both Curio and Clodius were members,
+were said to be equally hostile to C&aelig;sar, Pompey, and
+Crassus, whose doings in opposition to the constitution were
+already evident enough; so that it suited Cicero to believe that
+the rising aristocracy of Rome would oppose them. But the
+aristocracy of Rome, whether old or young, cared for nothing but
+its fish-ponds and its amusements.</p>
+
+<p>Cicero spent the earlier part of the year out of Rome, among his
+various villas&mdash;at Tusculanum, at Antium, and at Formi&aelig;. The
+purport of all his letters at this period is the same&mdash;to
+complain of the condition of the Republic, and especially of the
+treachery of his friend Pompey. Though there be much of despondency
+in his tone, there is enough also of high spirit to make us feel
+that his literary aspirations are not out of place, though mingled
+with his political wailing. The time will soon come when his trust
+even in literature will fail him for a while.</p>
+
+<p>Early in the year he declares that he would like to accept a
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_288" id="Page_288">
+288</a></span>mission to Egypt, offered to him by C&aelig;sar and
+Pompey, partly in order that he might for a while be quit of Rome,
+and partly that Romans might feel how ill they could do without
+him. He then uses for the first time, as far as I am aware, a line
+from the Iliad,<a name="FNanchor_252_252" id=
+"FNanchor_252_252"></a><a href="#Footnote_252_252" class=
+"fnanchor">252</a> which is repeated by him again and again, in
+part or in whole, to signify the restraint which is placed on him
+by his own high character among his fellow-citizens. "I would go to
+Egypt on this pleasant excursion, but that I fear what the men of
+Troy, and the Trojan women, with their wide-sweeping robes, would
+say of me." And what, he asks, would the men of our party, "the
+optimates," say? and what would Cato say, whose opinion is more to
+me than that of them all? And how would history tell the story in
+future ages? But he would like to go to Egypt, and he will wait and
+see. Then, after various questions to Atticus, comes that great one
+as to the augurship, of which so much has been made by Cicero's
+enemies, "quo quidem uno ego ab istis capi possim." A few lines
+above he had been speaking of another lure, that of the mission to
+Egypt. He discusses that with his friend, and then goes on in his
+half-joking phrase, "but this would have been the real thing to
+catch me." Nothing caught him. He was steadfast all through,
+accepting no offer of place from the conspirators by which his
+integrity or his honor could be soiled. That it was so was well
+known to history in the time of Quintilian, whose testimony as to
+the "repudiatus vigintiviratus"&mdash;his refusal of a place among
+the twenty commissioners&mdash;has been already quoted.<a name=
+"FNanchor_253_253" id="FNanchor_253_253"></a><a href=
+"#Footnote_253_253" class="fnanchor">253</a> And yet biographers
+have written of him as of one willing to sell his honor, his
+opinions, and the commonwealth, for a "pitiful bribe;" not that he
+did do so, not that he attempted to do it, <span class='pagenum'><a
+name="Page_289" id="Page_289">289</a></span>but because in a
+half-joking letter to the friend of his bosom he tells his friend
+which way his tastes lay!<a name="FNanchor_254_254" id=
+"FNanchor_254_254"></a><a href="#Footnote_254_254" class=
+"fnanchor">254</a></p>
+
+<p>He had been thinking of writing a book on geography, and
+consulted Atticus on the subject; but in one of his letters he
+tells his friend that he had abandoned the idea. The subject was
+too dull; and if he took one side in a dispute that was existing,
+he would be sure to fall under the lash of the critics on the
+other. He is enjoying his leisure at Antium, and thinks it a much
+better place than Rome. If the weather will not let him catch fish,
+at any rate he can count the waves. In all these letters Cicero
+asks questions about his money and his private affairs; about the
+mending of a wall, perhaps, and adds something about his wife or
+daughter or son. He is going from Antium to Formi&aelig;, but must
+return to Antium by a certain date because Tullia wants to see the
+games.</p>
+
+<p>Then again he alludes to Clodius. Pompey had made a compact with
+Clodius&mdash;so at least Cicero had heard&mdash;that he, Clodius,
+if elected for the Tribunate, would do nothing to injure Cicero.
+The assurance of such a compact had no doubt been spread about for
+the quieting of Cicero; but no such compact had been intended to be
+kept, unless Cicero would be amenable, would take some of the good
+things offered to him, or at any rate hold his peace. But Cicero
+affects to hope that no such agreement may be kept. He is always
+nicknaming Pompey, who during his Eastern campaign had taken
+Jerusalem, and who now parodies the Africanus, the Asiaticus, and
+the Macedonicus of the Scipios and Metelluses. "If that
+Hierosolymarian candidate for popularity does not keep his word
+with me, I shall be delighted. If that be his return for my
+speeches on his behalf"&mdash;the Anteponatur omnibus Pompeius, for
+instance&mdash;"I will play him such a turn of another kind that he
+shall remember it."<a name="FNanchor_255_255" id=
+"FNanchor_255_255"></a><a href="#Footnote_255_255" class=
+"fnanchor">255</a></p>
+
+<p>He begins to know what the "Triumvirate" is doing with <span
+class='pagenum'><a name="Page_290" id="Page_290">
+290</a></span>the Republic, but has not yet brought himself to
+suspect the blow that is to fall on himself. "They are going along
+very gayly," he says, "and do not make as much noise as one would
+have expected."<a name="FNanchor_256_256" id=
+"FNanchor_256_256"></a><a href="#Footnote_256_256" class=
+"fnanchor">256</a> If Cato had been more on the alert, things
+would not have gone so quickly; but the dishonesty of others, who
+have allowed all the laws to be ignored, has been worse than Cato.
+If we used to feel that the Senate took too much on itself, what
+shall we say when that power has been transferred, not to the
+people, but to three utterly unscrupulous men? "They can make whom
+they will Consuls, whom they will Tribunes&mdash;so that they may
+hide the very goitre of Vatinius under a priest's robe." For
+himself, Cicero says, he will be contented to remain with his
+books, if only Clodius will allow him; if not, he will defend
+himself.<a name="FNanchor_257_257" id="FNanchor_257_257"></a><a
+href="#Footnote_257_257" class="fnanchor">257</a> As for his
+country, he has done more for his country than has even been
+desired of him; and he thinks it to be better to leave the helm in
+the hands of pilots, however incompetent, than himself to steer
+when passengers are so thankless. Then we find that he robs poor
+Tullia of her promised pleasure at the games, because it will be
+beneath his dignity to appear at them. He is always very anxious
+for his friend's letters, depending on them for news and for
+amusement. "My messenger will return at once," he says, in one;
+"therefore, though you are coming yourself very soon, send me a
+heavy letter, full not only of news but of your own ideas."<a name=
+"FNanchor_258_258" id="FNanchor_258_258"></a><a href=
+"#Footnote_258_258" class="fnanchor">258</a> In another: "Cicero
+the Little sends greeting," he says, in Greek, "to Titus the
+Athenian"&mdash;that is, to Titus Pomponius Atticus. The Greek
+letters <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_291" id="Page_291">
+291</a></span>were probably traced by the child at his father's
+knee as Cicero held the pen or the stylus. In another letter he
+declares that there, at Formi&aelig;, Pompey's name of Magnus is no more
+esteemed than that of Dives belonging to Crassus. In the next he
+calls Pompey Sampsiceramus. We learn from Josephus that there was a
+lady afterward in the East in the time of Vitellius, who was
+daughter of Sampsigeramus, King of the Emesi. It might probably be
+a royal family name.<a name="FNanchor_259_259" id=
+"FNanchor_259_259"></a><a href="#Footnote_259_259" class=
+"fnanchor">259</a> In choosing the absurd title, he is again
+laughing at his party leader. Pompey had probably boasted of his
+doings with the Sampsiceramus of the day and the priests of
+Jerusalem. "When this Sampsiceramus of ours finds how ill he is
+spoken of, he will rush headlong into revolution." He complains
+that he can do nothing at Formi&aelig; because of the visitors. No
+English poet was ever so interviewed by American admirers. They
+came at all hours, in numbers sufficient to fill a temple, let
+alone a gentleman's house. How can he write anything requiring
+leisure in such a condition as this? Nevertheless he will attempt
+something. He goes on criticising all that is done in Rome,
+especially what is done by Pompey, who no doubt was vacillating
+sadly between C&aelig;sar, to whom he was bound, and Bibulus, the
+other Consul, to whom he ought to have been bound, as being
+naturally on the aristocratic side. He cannot for a moment keep his
+pen from public matters; nor, on the other hand, can he refrain
+from declaring that he will apply himself wholly, undividedly, to
+his literature. "Therefore, oh my Titus, let me settle down to
+these glorious occupations, and return to that which, if I had been
+wise, I never should have left."<a name="FNanchor_260_260" id=
+"FNanchor_260_260"></a><a href="#Footnote_260_260" class=
+"fnanchor">260</a> A day or two afterward, writing from the same
+place, he asks what Arabarches is saying of him. Arabarches is
+another name for Pompey&mdash;this Arabian chieftain.</p>
+
+<p>In the early summer of this year Cicero returned to Rome, <span
+class='pagenum'><a name="Page_292" id="Page_292">
+292</a></span>probably in time to see Atticus, who was then about
+to leave the city for his estates in Epirus. We have a letter
+written by him to his friend on the journey, telling us that
+C&aelig;sar had made him two distinct offers, evidently with the
+view of getting rid of him, but in such a manner as would be
+gratifying to Cicero himself.<a name="FNanchor_261_261" id=
+"FNanchor_261_261"></a><a href="#Footnote_261_261" class=
+"fnanchor">261</a> C&aelig;sar asks him to go with him to Gaul as
+his lieutenant, or, if that will not suit him, to accept a "free
+legation for the sake of paying a vow." This latter was a kind of
+job by which Roman Senators got themselves sent forth on their
+private travels with all the appanages of a Senator travelling on
+public business. We have his argument as to both. Elsewhere he
+objects to a "libera legatio" as being a job.<a name=
+"FNanchor_262_262" id="FNanchor_262_262"></a><a href=
+"#Footnote_262_262" class="fnanchor">262</a> Here he only points
+out that, though it enforce his absence from Rome at a time
+disagreeable to him&mdash;just when his brother Quintus would
+return&mdash;it would not give him the protection which he needs.
+Though he were travelling about the world as a Senator on some
+pretended embassy, he would still be open to the attacks of
+Clodius. He would necessarily be absent, or he would not be in
+enjoyment of his privilege, but by his very absence he would find
+his position weakened; whereas, as C&aelig;sar's appointed
+lieutenant, he need not leave the city at once, and in that
+position he would be quite safe against all that Clodius or other
+enemies could do to him.<a name="FNanchor_263_263" id=
+"FNanchor_263_263"></a><a href="#Footnote_263_263" class=
+"fnanchor">263</a>
+No indictment could be made against a Roman while he was in the
+employment of the State. It must be remembered, too, on judging of
+these overtures, that both the one and the other&mdash;and indeed
+all the offers then made to him&mdash;were deemed to be highly
+honorable, as Rome then existed. "The free legation"&mdash;the
+"libera legatio voti causa"&mdash;had <span class='pagenum'><a
+name="Page_293" id="Page_293">293</a></span>no reference to
+parties. It was a job, no doubt, and, in the hands of the ordinary
+Roman aristocrat, likely to be very onerous to the provincials
+among whom the privileged Senator might travel; but it entailed no
+party adhesion. In this case it was intended only to guarantee the
+absence of a man who might be troublesome in Rome. The other was
+the offer of genuine work in which politics were not at all
+concerned. Such a position was accepted by Quintus, our Cicero's
+brother, and in performance of the duties which fell to him he
+incurred terrible danger, having been nearly destroyed by the Gauls
+in his winter quarters among the Nervii. Labienus, who was
+C&aelig;sar's right-hand man in Gaul, was of the same politics as
+Cicero&mdash;so much so that when C&aelig;sar rebelled against the
+Republic, Labienus, true to the Republic, would no longer fight on
+C&aelig;sar's side. It was open to Cicero, without disloyalty, to
+accept the offer made to him; but with an insight into what was
+coming, of which he himself was hardly conscious, he could not
+bring himself to accept offers which in themselves were alluring,
+but which would seem in future times to have implied on his part an
+assent to the breaking up of the Republic. &#913;&#7984;&#948;&#8051;&#959;&#956;&#945;&#953; &#932;&#961;&#8182;&#945;&#962; &#954;&#945;&#8054;
+&#932;&#961;&#969;&#8049;&#948;&#945;&#962; &#7952;&#955;&#954;&#949;&#963;&#953;&#960;&#8051;&#960;&#955;&#959;&#965;&#962;. What will be said of me in history by
+my citizens if I now do simply that which may best suit my own
+happiness? Had he done so, Pliny and the others would not have
+spoken of him as they have spoken, and it would not have been worth
+the while of modern lovers of C&aelig;sarism to write books against
+the one patriot of his age.</p>
+
+<p>During the remainder of this year, <span class=
+"smcap">b.c.</span> 59, Cicero was at Rome, and seems gradually to
+have become aware that a personal attack was to be made upon him.
+At the close of a long and remarkable letter written to his brother
+Quintus in November, he explains the state of his own mind, showing
+us, who have now before us the future which was hidden from him,
+how greatly mistaken he was as to the results which were to be
+expected. He had been telling his brother how nearly Cato <span
+class='pagenum'><a name="Page_294" id="Page_294">
+294</a></span>had been murdered for calling Pompey, in public, a
+Dictator. Then he goes on to describe his own condition.<a name=
+"FNanchor_264_264" id="FNanchor_264_264"></a><a href=
+"#Footnote_264_264" class="fnanchor">264</a> "You may see from
+this what is the state of the Republic. As far as I am concerned,
+it seems that friends will not be wanting to defend me. They offer
+themselves in a wonderful way, and promise assistance. I feel great
+hope and still greater spirit&mdash;hope, which tells me that we
+shall be victors in the struggle; spirit, which bids me fear no
+casualty in the present state of public affairs."<a name=
+"FNanchor_265_265" id="FNanchor_265_265"></a><a href=
+"#Footnote_265_265" class="fnanchor">265</a> But the matter
+stands in this way: "If he"&mdash;that is, Clodius&mdash;"should
+indict me in court, all Italy would come to my defence, so that I
+should be acquitted with honor. Should he attack me with open
+violence, I should have, I think, not only my own party but the
+world at large to stand by me. All men promise me their friends,
+their clients, their freedmen, their slaves, and even their money.
+Our old body of aristocrats"&mdash;Cato, Bibulus, and the makers of
+fish-ponds generally&mdash;"are wonderfully warm in my cause. If
+any of these have heretofore been remiss, now they join our party
+from sheer hatred of these kings"&mdash;the Triumvirs. "Pompey
+promises everything, and so does C&aelig;sar, whom I only trust so
+far as I can see them." Even the Triumvirs promise him that he will
+be safe; but his belief in Pompey's honesty is all but gone. "The
+coming Tribunes are my friends. The Consuls of next year promise
+well." He was wofully mistaken. "We have excellent Pr&aelig;tors,
+citizens alive to their duty. Domitius, Nigidius, Memmius, and
+Lentulus are specially trustworthy. The others are good men. You
+may therefore pluck up your courage and be confident." From this we
+perceive that he had already formed the idea that he might perhaps
+be required to fight for his position as a Roman citizen; and it
+seems also <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_295" id=
+"Page_295">295</a></span>that he understood the cause of the
+coming conflict. The intention was that he should be driven out of
+Rome by personal enmity. Nothing is said in any of these letters of
+the excuse to be used, though he knew well what that excuse was to
+be. He was to be charged by the Patrician Tribune with having put
+Roman citizens to death in opposition to the law. But there arises
+at this time no question whether he had or had not been justified
+in what he, as Consul, had done to Lentulus and the others. Would
+Clodius be able to rouse a mob against him? and, if so, would
+C&aelig;sar assist Clodius? or would Pompey who still loomed to his
+eyes as the larger of the two men? He had ever been the friend of
+Pompey, and Pompey had promised him all manner of assistance; but
+he knew already that Pompey would turn upon him. That Rome should
+turn upon him&mdash;Rome which he had preserved from the torches of
+Catiline's conspirators&mdash;that he could not bring himself to
+believe!</p>
+
+<p>We must not pass over this long letter to Quintus without
+observing that through it all the evil condition of the younger
+brother's mind becomes apparent. The severity of his administration
+had given offence. His punishments had been cruel. His letters had
+been rash, and his language violent. In short, we gather from the
+brother's testimony that Quintus Cicero was very ill-fitted to be
+the civil governor of a province.</p>
+
+<p>The only work which we have from Cicero belonging to this year,
+except his letters, is the speech, or part of the speech, he made
+for Lucius Valerius Flaccus. Flaccus had been Pr&aelig;tor when Cicero
+was Consul, and had done good service, in the eyes of his superior
+officers, in the matter of the Catiline conspiracy. He had then
+gone to Asia as governor, and, after the Roman manner, had fleeced
+the province. That this was so there is no doubt. After his return
+he was accused, was defended by Cicero, and was acquitted.
+Macrobius tells us that Cicero, by the happiness of a bon-mot,
+brought the accused off safely, though he was manifestly guilty. He
+adds also that Cicero took care not to allow the joke to appear in
+the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_296" id="Page_296">
+296</a></span>published edition of his speech.<a name=
+"FNanchor_266_266" id="FNanchor_266_266"></a><a href=
+"#Footnote_266_266" class="fnanchor">266</a> There are parts of
+the speech which have been preserved, and are sufficiently amusing
+even to us. He is very hard upon the Greeks of Asia, the class from
+which the witnesses against Flaccus were taken. We know here in
+England that a spaniel, a wife, and a walnut-tree may be beaten
+with advantage. Cicero says that in Asia there is a proverb that a
+Phrygian may be improved in the same way. "Fiat experimentum in
+corpore vili." It is declared through Asia that you should take a
+Carian for your experiment. The "last of the Mysians" is the
+well-known Asiatic term for the lowest type of humanity. Look
+through all the comedies, you will find the leading slave is a
+Lydian. Then he turns to these poor Asiatics, and asks them whether
+any one can be expected to think well of them, when such is their
+own testimony of themselves! He attacks the Jew, and speaks of the
+Jewish religion as a superstition worthy in itself of no
+consideration. Pompey had spared the gold in the Temple of
+Jerusalem, because he thought it wise to respect the religious
+prejudices of the people; but the gods themselves had shown, by
+subjecting the Jews to the Romans, how little the gods had regarded
+these idolatrous worshippers! Such were the arguments used; and
+they prevailed with the judges&mdash;or jury, we should rather call
+them&mdash;to whom they were addressed.</p>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_297" id="Page_297">
+297</a></span></p>
+
+<h3><a name="CHAPTER_XII" id="CHAPTER_XII"></a><span class="smcap">Chapter XII.</span></h3>
+
+<h4><i>HIS EXILE.</i></h4>
+
+<p>We now come to that period of Cicero's life in which, by common
+consent of all who have hitherto written of him, he is supposed to
+have shown himself as least worthy of his high name. Middleton, who
+certainly loved his hero's memory and was always anxious to do him
+justice, condemns him. "It cannot be denied that in this calamity
+of his exile he did not behave himself with that firmness which
+might reasonably be expected from one who had borne so glorious a
+part in the Republic." Morabin, the French biographer, speaks of
+the wailings of his grief, of its injustice and its follies.
+"Cic&eacute;ron &eacute;tait trop plein de son malheur pour donner
+entr&eacute;e &agrave; de nouvelles esp&eacute;rances," he says.
+"Il avait support&eacute; ce malheur avec peu de courage," says
+another Frenchman, M. Du Rozoir, in introducing us to the speeches
+which Cicero made on his return. Dean Merivale declares that "he
+marred the grace of the concession in the eyes of
+posterity"&mdash;alluding to the concession made to popular feeling
+by his voluntary departure from Rome, as will hereafter be
+described&mdash;"by the unmanly lamentations with which he
+accompanied it." Mommsen, with a want of insight into character
+wonderful in an author who has so closely studied the history of
+the period, speaks of his exile as a punishment inflicted on a "man
+notoriously timid, and belonging to the class of political
+weather-cocks." "We now come," says Mr. Forsyth, "to the most
+melancholy period of Cicero's life, melancholy not so much from its
+nature and the extent of the misfortunes which overtook him, as
+from the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_298" id="Page_298">
+298</a></span>abject prostration of mind into which he was
+thrown." Mr. Froude, as might be expected, uses language stronger
+than that of others, and tells us that "he retired to Macedonia to
+pour out his sorrows and his resentments in lamentations unworthy
+of a woman." We have to admit that modern historians and
+biographers have been united in accusing Cicero of want of
+manliness during his exile. I propose&mdash;not, indeed, to wash
+the blackamoor white&mdash;but to show, if I can, that he was as
+white as others might be expected to have been in similar
+circumstances.</p>
+
+<p>We are, I think, somewhat proud of the courage shown by public
+men of our country who have suffered either justly or unjustly
+under the laws. Our annals are bloody, and many such have had to
+meet their death. They have done so generally with becoming
+manliness. Even though they may have been rebels against the powers
+of the day, their memories have been made green because they have
+fallen like brave men. Sir Thomas More, who was no rebel, died
+well, and crowned a good life by his manner of leaving it. Thomas
+Cromwell submitted to the axe without a complaint. Lady Jane Grey,
+when on the scaffold, yielded nothing in manliness to the others.
+Cranmer and the martyr bishops perished nobly. The Earl of Essex,
+and Raleigh, and Strafford, and Strafford's master showed no fear
+when the fatal moment came. In reading the fate of each, we
+sympathize with the victim because of a certain dignity at the
+moment of death. But there is, I think, no crisis of life in which
+it is so easy for a man to carry himself honorably as that in which
+he has to leave it. "Venit summa dies et ineluctabile tempus." No
+doubting now can be of avail. No moment is left for the display of
+conduct beyond this, which requires only decorum and a free use of
+the pulses to become in some degree glorious. The wretch from the
+lowest dregs of the people can achieve it with a halter round his
+neck. Cicero had that moment also to face; and when it came he was
+as brave as the best Englishman of them all. <span class=
+'pagenum'><a name="Page_299" id="Page_299">299</a></span>But
+of those I have named no one had an Atticus to whom it had been the
+privilege of his life to open his very soul, in language so
+charming as to make it worth posterity's while to read it, to study
+it, to sift it, and to criticise it. Wolsey made many plaints in
+his misery, but they have reached us in such forms of grace that
+they do not disparage him; but then he too had no Atticus.
+Shaftesbury and Bolingbroke were dismissed ministers and doomed to
+live in exile, the latter for many years, and felt, no doubt,
+strongly their removal from the glare of public life to obscurity.
+We hear no complaint from them which can justify some future critic
+in saying that their wails were unworthy of a woman; but neither of
+them was capable of telling an Atticus the thoughts of his mind as
+they rose. What other public man ever had an Atticus to whom, in
+the sorrows which the ingratitude of friends had brought upon him,
+he could disclose every throb of his heart?</p>
+
+<p>I think that we are often at a loss, in our efforts at
+appreciation of character, and in the expressions of our opinion
+respecting it, to realize the meaning of courage and manliness.
+That sententious Swedish Queen, one of whose foolish maxims I have
+quoted, has said that Cicero, though a coward, was capable of great
+actions, because she did not know what a coward was. To
+doubt&mdash;to tremble with anxiety&mdash;to vacillate hither and
+thither between this course and the other as to which may be the
+better&mdash;to complain within one's own breast that this or that
+thing has been an injustice&mdash;to hesitate within one's self,
+not quite knowing which way honor may require us to go&mdash;to be
+indignant even at fancied wrongs&mdash;to rise in wrath against
+another, and then, before the hour has passed, to turn that wrath
+against one's self&mdash;that is not to be a coward. To know what
+duty requires, and then to be deterred by fear of
+results&mdash;that is to be a coward; but the man of many scruples
+may be the greatest hero of them all. Let the law of things be
+declared clearly <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_300" id=
+"Page_300">300</a></span>so that the doubting mind shall no
+longer doubt, so that scruples may be laid at rest, so that the
+sense of justice may be satisfied&mdash;and he of whom I speak
+shall be ready to meet the world in arms against him. There are
+men, very useful in their way, who shall never doubt at all, but
+shall be ready, as the bull is ready, to encounter any obstacles
+that there may be before them. I will not say but that for the
+coarse purposes of the world they may not be the most efficacious,
+but I will not admit that they are therefore the bravest. The bull,
+who has no imagination to tell him what the obstacle may do to him,
+is not brave. He is brave who, fully understanding the potentiality
+of the obstacle, shall, for a sufficient purpose, move against
+it.</p>
+
+<p>This Cicero always did. He braved the murderous anger of Sulla
+when, as a young man, he thought it well to stop the greed of
+Sulla's minions. He trusted himself amid the dangers prepared for
+him, when it was necessary that with extraordinary speed he should
+get together the evidence needed for the prosecution of Verres. He
+was firm against all that Catiline attempted for his destruction,
+and had courage enough for the responsibility when he thought it
+expedient to doom the friends of Catiline to death. In defending
+Milo, whether the cause were good or bad, he did not blench.<a
+name="FNanchor_267_267" id="FNanchor_267_267"></a><a href=
+"#Footnote_267_267" class="fnanchor">267</a> He joined the
+Republican army in Macedonia though he distrusted Pompey and his
+companions. When he thought that there was a hope for the Republic,
+he sprung at Antony with all the courage of a tigress protecting
+her young; and when all had failed and was rotten around him, when
+the Republic had so fallen that he knew it to be gone&mdash;then he
+was able to give his neck to the swordsman with all the apparent
+indifference of life which was displayed by those countrymen of our
+own whom I have named.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_301" id="Page_301">
+301</a></span>But why did he write so piteously when he was driven
+into exile? Why, at any rate, did he turn upon his chosen friend
+and scold him, as though that friend had not done enough for
+friendship? Why did he talk of suicide as though by that he might
+find the easiest way of escape?</p>
+
+<p>I hold it to be natural that a man should wail to himself under
+a sense, not simply of misfortune, but of misfortune coming to him
+from the injustice of others, and specially from the ingratitude of
+friends. Afflictions which come to us from natural causes, such as
+sickness and physical pain, or from some chance such as the loss of
+our money by the breaking of a bank, an heroic man will bear
+without even inward complainings. But a sense of wrong done to him
+by friends will stir him, not by the misery inflicted, but because
+of the injustice; and that which he says to himself he will say to
+his wife, if his wife be to him a second self, or to his friend, if
+he have one so dear to him. The testimony by which the writers I
+have named have been led to treat Cicero so severely has been found
+in the letters which he wrote during his exile; and of these
+letters all but one were addressed either to Atticus or to his wife
+or to his brother.<a name="FNanchor_268_268" id=
+"FNanchor_268_268"></a><a href="#Footnote_268_268" class=
+"fnanchor">268</a> Twenty-seven of them were to Atticus. Before
+he accepted a voluntary exile, as the best solution of the
+difficulty in which he was placed&mdash;for it was voluntary at
+first, as will be seen&mdash;he applied to the Consul Piso for aid,
+and for the same purpose visited Pompey. So far he was a suppliant,
+but this he did in conformity with Roman usage. In asking favor of
+a man in power there was held to be no disgrace, even though the
+favor asked were one improper to be granted, which was not the case
+with Cicero. And he went about the Forum in
+mourning&mdash;"sordidatus"&mdash;as was the custom with men on
+their trial. We cannot doubt that in each of <span class=
+'pagenum'><a name="Page_302" id="Page_302">302</a></span>these
+cases he acted with the advice of his friends. His conduct and his
+words after his return from exile betray exultation rather than
+despondency.</p>
+
+<p>It is from the letters which he wrote to Atticus that he has
+been judged&mdash;from words boiling with indignation that such a
+one as he should have been surrendered by the Rome that he had
+saved, by those friends to whom he had been so true to be trampled
+on by such a one as Clodius! When a man has written words intended
+for the public ear, it is fair that he should bear the brunt of
+them, be it what it may. He has intended them for public effect,
+and if they are used against him he should not complain. But here
+the secret murmurings of the man's soul were sent forth to his
+choicest friend, with no idea that from them would he be judged by
+the "historians to come in 600 years,"<a name="FNanchor_269_269"
+id="FNanchor_269_269"></a><a href="#Footnote_269_269" class=
+"fnanchor">269</a> of whose good word he thought so much. "Quid
+vero histori&aelig; de nobis ad annos DC. pr&aelig;dicarint!" he says, to
+Atticus. How is it that from them, after 2000 years, the Merivales,
+Mommsens, and Froudes condemn their great brother in letters whose
+lightest utterances have been found worthy of so long a life! Is
+there not an injustice in falling upon a man's private words, words
+when written intended only for privacy, and making them the basis
+of an accusation in which an illustrious man shall be arraigned
+forever as a coward? It is said that he was unjust even to Atticus,
+accusing even Atticus of lukewarmness. What if he did so&mdash;for
+an hour? Is that an affair of ours? Did Atticus quarrel with him?
+Let any reader of these words who has lived long enough to have an
+old friend, ask himself whether there has never been a moment of
+anger in his heart&mdash;of anger of which he has soon learned to
+recognize the injustice? He may not have written his anger, but
+then, perhaps, he has not had the pen of a Cicero. Let those who
+rebuke the unmanliness of Cicero's wailings remember what were his
+sufferings. The <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_303" id=
+"Page_303">303</a></span>story has yet to be told, but I may
+in rough words describe their nature. Everything was to be taken
+from him: all that he had&mdash;his houses, his books, his pleasant
+gardens, his busts and pictures, his wide retinue of slaves, and
+possessions lordly as are those of our dukes and earls. He was
+driven out from Italy and so driven that no place of delight could
+be open to him. Sicily, where he had friends, Athens, where he
+might have lived, were closed against him. He had to look where to
+live, and did live for a while on money borrowed from his friends.
+All the cherished occupations of his life were over for
+him&mdash;the law courts, the Forum, the Senate, and the crowded
+meetings of Roman citizens hanging on his words. The circumstances
+of his exile separated him from his wife and children, so that he
+was alone. All this was assured to him for life, as far as Roman
+law could assure it. Let us think of the condition of some great
+and serviceable Englishman in similar circumstances. Let us suppose
+that Sir Robert Peel had been impeached, and forced by some
+iniquitous sentence to live beyond the pale of civilization: that
+the houses at Whitehall Gardens and at Drayton had been
+confiscated, dismantled, and levelled to the ground, and his rents
+and revenues made over to his enemies; that everything should have
+been done to destroy him by the country he had served, except the
+act of taking away that life which would thus have been made a
+burden to him. Would not his case have been more piteous, a source
+of more righteous indignation, than that even of the Mores or
+Raleighs? He suffered under invectives in the House of Commons, and
+we sympathized with him; but if some Clodius of the day could have
+done this to him, should we have thought the worse of him had he
+opened his wounds to his wife, or to his brother, or to his friend
+of friends?</p>
+
+<p>Had Cicero put an end to his life in his exile, as he thought of
+doing, he would have been a second Cato to admiring posterity, and
+some Lucan with rolling verses would have told us narratives of his
+valor. The judges of to-day look back to his <span class=
+'pagenum'><a name="Page_304" id="Page_304">
+304</a></span>half-formed purposes in this direction as being an
+added evidence of the weakness of the man; but had he let himself
+blood and have perished in his bath, he would have been thought to
+have escaped from life as honorably as did Junius Brutus It is
+because he dared to live on that we are taught to think so little
+of him,&mdash;because he had antedated Christianity so far as to feel
+when the moment came that such an escape was, in truth, unmanly. He
+doubted, and when the deed had not been done he expressed regret
+that he had allowed himself to live. But he did not do it,&mdash;as Cato
+would have done, or Brutus.</p>
+
+<p>It may be as well here to combat, in as few words as possible,
+the assertions which have been made that Cicero, having begun life
+as a democrat, discarded his colors as soon as he had received from
+the people those honors for which he had sought popularity. They
+who have said so have taken their idea from the fact that, in much
+of his early forensic work, he spoke against the aristocratic
+party. He attacked Sulla, through his favorite Chrysogonus, in his
+defence of Roscius Amerinus. He afterward defended a woman of
+Arretium in the spirit of antagonism to Sulla. His accusation of
+Verres was made on the same side in politics, and was carried on in
+opposition to Hortensius and the oligarchs. He defended the Tribune
+Caius Cornelius. Then, when he became Consul, he devoted himself to
+the destruction of Catiline, who was joined with many, perhaps with
+C&aelig;sar's sympathy, in the conspiracy for the overthrow of the
+Republic. C&aelig;sar soon became the leader of the democracy,&mdash;became
+rather what Mommsen describes as "Democracy" itself; and as
+Cicero had defended the Senate from Catiline, and had refused to
+attach himself to C&aelig;sar, he is supposed to have turned from
+the political ideas of his youth, and to have become a Conservative
+when Conservative ideas suited his ambition.</p>
+
+<p>I will not accept the excuse put forward on his behalf, that the
+early speeches were made on the side of democracy because the
+exigencies of the occasion required him to so devote <span class=
+'pagenum'><a name="Page_305" id="Page_305">305</a></span>his
+energies as an advocate. No doubt he was an advocate, as are our
+barristers of to-day, and, as an advocate, supported this side or
+that; but we shall be wrong if we suppose that the Roman "patronus"
+supplied his services under such inducements. With us a man goes
+into the profession of the law with the intention of making money,
+and takes the cases right and left, unless there be special
+circumstances which may debar him from doing so with honor. It is a
+point of etiquette with him to give his assistance, in turn, as
+he may be called on; so much so, that leading men are not
+unfrequently employed on one side simply that they may not be
+employed on the other side. It should not be urged on the part of
+Cicero that, so actuated, he defended Amerinus, a case in which he
+took part against the aristocrats, or defended Publius Sulla, in
+doing which he appeared on the side of the aristocracy. Such a
+defence of his conduct would be misleading, and might be confuted.
+It would be confuted by those who suppose him to have been
+"notoriously a political trimmer," as Mommsen has<a name=
+"FNanchor_270_270" id="FNanchor_270_270"></a><a href=
+"#Footnote_270_270" class="fnanchor">270</a> called him; or a
+"deserter," as he was described by Dio Cassius and by the
+Pseudo-Sallust,<a name="FNanchor_271_271" id=
+"FNanchor_271_271"></a><a href="#Footnote_271_271" class=
+"fnanchor">271</a> by showing that in fact he took up causes
+under the influence of strong personal motives such as rarely
+govern an English barrister. These motives were in many cases
+partly political; but they operated in such a manner as to give no
+guide to his political views. In defending Sulla's nephew he was
+moved, as far as we know, solely by private motives. In defending
+Amerinus he may be said to have attacked Sulla. His object was to
+stamp out the still burning embers of Sulla's cruelty; but not the
+less was he wedded to Sulla's general views as to the restoration
+of the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_306" id="Page_306">
+306</a></span>authority of the Senate. In his early speeches,
+especially in that spoken against Verres, he denounces the
+corruption of the senatorial judges; but at that very period of his
+life he again and again expresses his own belief in the glory and
+majesty of the Senate. In accusing Verres he accused the general
+corruption of Rome's provincial governors; and as they were always
+past-Consuls or past-Pr&aelig;tors, and had been the elite of the
+aristocracy, he may be said so far to have taken the part of a
+democrat; but he had done so only so far as he had found himself
+bound by a sense of duty to put a stop to corruption. The venality
+of the judges and the rapacity of governors had been fit objects
+for his eloquence; but I deny that he can be fairly charged with
+having tampered with democracy because he had thus used his
+eloquence on behalf of the people.</p>
+
+<p>He was no doubt stirred by other political motives less
+praiseworthy, though submitted to in accordance with the practice
+and the known usages of Rome. He had undertaken to speak for
+Catiline when Catiline was accused of corruption on his return from
+Africa, knowing that Catiline had been guilty. He did not do so;
+but the intention, for our present purpose, is the same as the
+doing. To have defended Catiline would have assisted him in his
+operations as a candidate for the Consulship. Catiline was a bad
+subject for a defence&mdash;as was Fonteius, whom he certainly did
+defend&mdash;and Catiline was a democrat. But Cicero, had he
+defended Catiline, would not have done so as holding out his hand
+to democracy. Cicero, when, in the Pro Lege Manilia, he for the
+first time addressed the people, certainly spoke in opposition to
+the wishes of the Senate in proposing that Pompey should have the
+command of the Mithridatic war; but his views were not democratic.
+It has been said that this was done because Pompey could help him
+to the Consulship. To me it seems that he had already declared to
+himself that among leading men in Rome Pompey was the one to whom
+the Republic would look with the most security as a bulwark, and
+that on that account he had resolved to bind <span class=
+'pagenum'><a name="Page_307" id="Page_307">
+307</a></span>himself to Pompey in some political marriage. Be
+that as it may, there was no tampering with democracy in the speech
+Pro Lege Manilia. Of all the extant orations made by him before his
+Consulship, the attentive reader will sympathize the least with
+that of Fonteius. After his scathing onslaught on Verres for
+provincial plunder, he defended the plunderer of the Gauls, and
+held up the suffering allies of Rome to ridicule as being hardly
+entitled to good government. This he did simply as an advocate,
+without political motive of any kind&mdash;in the days in which he
+was supposed to be currying favor with democracy&mdash;governed by
+private friendship, looking forward, probably, to some friendly
+office in return, as was customary. It was thus that afterward he
+defended Antony, his colleague in the Consulship, whom he knew to
+have been a corrupt governor. Autronius had been a party to
+Catiline's conspiracy, and Autronius had been Cicero's
+school-fellow; but Cicero, for some reserved reason with which we
+are not acquainted, refused to plead for Autronius. There is, I
+maintain, no ground for suggesting that Cicero had shown by his
+speeches before his Consulship any party adherence. The declaration
+which he made after his Consulship, in the speech for Sulla, that
+up to the time of Catiline's first conspiracy forensic duties had
+not allowed him to devote himself to party politics, is entitled to
+belief: we know, indeed, that it was so. As Qu&aelig;stor, as &AElig;dile,
+and as Pr&aelig;tor, he did not interfere in the political questions of
+Rome, except in demanding justice from judges and purity from
+governors. When he became Consul then he became a politician, and
+after that there was certainly no vacillation in his views. Critics
+say that he surrendered himself to C&aelig;sar when C&aelig;sar
+became master. We shall come to that hereafter; but the accusation
+with which I am dealing now is that which charges him with having
+abandoned the democratic memories of his youth as soon as he had
+enveloped himself with the consular purple. There had been no
+democratic promises, and there was no change when he became
+Consul.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_308" id="Page_308">
+308</a></span>In truth, Cicero's political convictions were the
+same from the beginning to the end of his career, with a
+consistency which is by no means usual in politicians; for though,
+before his Consulship, he had not taken up politics as a business
+he had entertained certain political views, as do all men who live
+in public. From the first to the last we may best describe him by
+the word we have now in use, as a conservative. The government of
+Rome had been an oligarchy for many years, though much had been
+done by the citizens to reduce the thraldom which an oligarchy is
+sure to exact. To that oligarchy Cicero was bound by all the
+convictions, by all the practices, and by all the prejudices of his
+life. When he speaks of a Republic he speaks of a people and of an
+Empire governed by an oligarchy; he speaks of a power to be kept in
+the hands of a few&mdash;for the benefit of the few, and of the
+many if it might be&mdash;but at any rate in the hands of a few.
+That those few should be so select as to admit of no new-comers
+among them, would probably have been a portion of his political
+creed, had he not been himself a "novus homo." As he was the first
+of his family to storm the barrier of the fortress, he had been
+forced to depend much on popular opinion; but not on that account
+had there been any dealings between him and democracy. That the
+Empire should be governed according to the old oligarchical forms
+which had been in use for more than four centuries, and had created
+the power of Rome&mdash;that was his political creed. That Consuls,
+Censors, and Senators might go on to the end of time with no
+diminution of their dignity, but with great increase of justice and
+honor and truth among them&mdash;that was his political aspiration.
+They had made Rome what it was, and he knew and could imagine
+nothing better; and, odious as an oligarchy is seen to be under the
+strong light of experience to which prolonged ages has subjected
+it, the aspiration on his part was noble. He has been wrongly
+accused of deserting "that democracy with which he had flirted in
+his youth." There had been no democracy in his youth, <span class=
+'pagenum'><a name="Page_309" id="Page_309">
+309</a></span>though there had existed such a condition in the
+time of the Gracchi. There was none in his youth and none in his
+age. That which has been wrongly called democracy was
+conspiracy&mdash;not a conspiracy of democrats such as led to our
+Commonwealth, or to the American Independence, or to the French
+Revolution; but conspiracy of a few nobles for the better assurance
+of the plunder, and the power, and the high places of the Empire.
+Of any tendency toward democracy no man has been less justly
+accused than Cicero, unless it might be C&aelig;sar. To C&aelig;sar
+we must accord the merit of having seen that a continuation of the
+old oligarchical forms was impracticable This Cicero did not see.
+He thought that the wounds inflicted by the degeneracy and
+profligacy of individuals were curable. It is attributed to
+C&aelig;sar that he conceived the grand idea of establishing
+general liberty under the sole dominion of one great, and therefore
+beneficent, ruler. I think he saw no farther than that he, by
+strategy, management, and courage might become this ruler, whether
+beneficent or the reverse. But here I think that it becomes the
+writer, whether he be historian, biographer, or fill whatever
+meaner position he may in literature, to declare that no
+beneficence can accompany such a form of government. For all
+temporary sleekness, for metropolitan comfort and fatness, the bill
+has to be paid sooner or later in ignorance, poverty, and
+oppression. With an oligarchy there will be other, perhaps graver,
+faults; but with an oligarchy there will be salt, though it be
+among a few. There will be a Cicero now and again&mdash;or at least
+a Cato. From the dead, stagnant level of personal despotism there
+can be no rising to life till corruption paralyzes the hands of
+power, and the fabric falls by its own decay Of this no proof can
+be found in the world's history so manifest as that taught by the
+Roman Empire.</p>
+
+<p>I think it is made clear by a study of Cicero's life and works,
+up to the period of his exile, that an adhesion to the old forms of
+the Roman Government was his guiding principle. <span class=
+'pagenum'><a name="Page_310" id="Page_310">310</a></span>I am
+sure that they who follow me to the close of his career will
+acknowledge that after his exile he lived for this principle, and
+that he died for it. "Respublica," the Republic, was the one word
+which to his ear contained a political charm. It was the shibboleth
+by which men were to be conjured into well-being. The word
+constitution is nearly as potent with us. But it is essential that
+the reader of Roman history and Roman biography should understand
+that the appellation had in it, for all Roman ears, a thoroughly
+conservative meaning. Among those who at Cicero's period dealt with
+politics in Rome&mdash;all of whom, no doubt, spoke of the Republic
+as the vessel of State which was to be defended by all
+persons&mdash;there were four classes. These were they who simply
+desired the plunder of the State&mdash;the Catilines, the Sullas of
+the day, and the Antonys; men such as Verres had been, and
+Fonteius, and Autronius. The other three can be best typified each
+by one man. There was C&aelig;sar, who knew that the Republic was
+gone, past all hope. There was Cato&mdash;"the dogmatical fool
+Cato" as Mommsen calls him, perhaps with some lack of the
+historian's dignity&mdash;who was true to the Republic, who could
+not bend an inch, and was thus as detrimental to any hope of
+reconstruction as a Catiline or a C&aelig;sar. Cicero was of the
+fourth class, believing in the Republic, intent on saving it,
+imbued amid all his doubts with a conviction that if the
+"optimates" or "boni"&mdash;the leading men of the
+party&mdash;would be true to themselves, Consuls, Censors, and
+Senate would still suffice to rule the world; but prepared to give
+and take with those who were opposed to him. It was his idea that
+political integrity should keep its own hands clean, but should
+wink at much dirt in the world at large. Nothing, he saw, could be
+done by Catonic rigor. We can see now that Ciceronic compromises
+were, and must have been, equally ineffective. The patient was past
+cure. But in seeking the truth as to Cicero, we have to perceive
+that amid all his doubts, frequently in despondency, sometimes
+overwhelmed by the misery and hopelessness <span class='pagenum'><a
+name="Page_311" id="Page_311">311</a></span>of his condition,
+he did hold fast by this idea to the end. The frequent expressions
+made to Atticus in opposition to this belief are to be taken as the
+murmurs of his mind at the moment; as you shall hear a man swear
+that all is gone, and see him tear his hair, and shall yet know
+that there is a deep fund of hope within his bosom. It was the
+ingratitude of his political friends, his "boni" and his
+"optimates," of Pompey as their head, which tried him the sorest;
+but he was always forgiving them, forgiving Pompey as the head of
+them, because he knew that, were he to be severed from them, then
+the political world must be closed to him altogether.</p>
+
+<p>Of Cicero's strength or Cicero's weakness Pompey seems to have
+known nothing. He was no judge of men. C&aelig;sar measured him
+with a great approach to accuracy. C&aelig;sar knew him to be the
+best Roman of his day; one who, if he could be brought over to
+serve in C&aelig;sarean ranks, would be invaluable&mdash;because of
+his honesty, his eloquence, and his capability; but he knew him as
+one who must be silenced if he were not brought to serve on the
+C&aelig;sarean side. Such a man, however, might be silenced for a
+while&mdash;taught to perceive that his efforts were vain&mdash;and
+then brought into favor by further overtures, and made of use.
+Personally he was pleasant to C&aelig;sar, who had taste enough to
+know that he was a man worthy of all personal dignity. But
+C&aelig;sar was not, I think, quite accurate in his estimation,
+having allowed himself to believe at the last that Cicero's energy
+on behalf of the Republic had been quelled.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">B. C. 58, &aelig;tat 49</div>
+
+<p>Now we will go back to the story of Cicero's exile. Gradually
+during the preceding year he had learned that Clodius was preparing
+to attack him, and to doubt whether he could expect protection from
+the Triumvirate. That he could be made safe by the justice either
+of the people or by that of any court before which he could be
+tried, seems never to have occurred to him. He knew the people and
+he knew the courts too well. Pompey no doubt might have warded
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_312" id="Page_312">
+312</a></span>off the coming evil; such at least was Cicero's
+idea. To him Pompey was the greatest political power as yet extant
+in Rome; but he was beginning to believe that Pompey would be
+untrue to him. When he had sent to Pompey a long account of the
+grand doings of his Consulship, Pompey had replied with faintest
+praises. He had rejected the overtures of the Triumvirate. In the
+last letter to Atticus in the year before, written in August,<a
+name="FNanchor_272_272" id="FNanchor_272_272"></a><a href=
+"#Footnote_272_272" class="fnanchor">272</a> he had declared that
+the Republic was ruined; that they who had brought things to this
+pass&mdash;meaning the Triumvirate&mdash;were hostile; but, for
+himself, he was confident in saying that he was quite safe in the
+good will of men around him. There is a letter to his brother
+written in November, the next letter in the collection, in which he
+says that Pompey and C&aelig;sar promise him everything. With the
+exception of two letters of introduction, we have nothing from him
+till he writes to Atticus from the first scene of his exile.</p>
+
+<p>When the new year commenced, Clodius was Tribune of the people,
+and immediately was active. Piso and Gabinius were Consuls. Piso
+was kinsman to Piso Frugi, who had married Cicero's daughter,<a
+name="FNanchor_273_273" id="FNanchor_273_273"></a><a href=
+"#Footnote_273_273" class="fnanchor">273</a>and was expected to
+befriend Cicero at this crisis. But Clodius procured the allotment
+of Syria and Macedonia to the two Consuls by the popular vote. They
+were provinces rich in plunder; and it was matter of importance for
+a Consul to know that the prey which should come to him as
+Proconsul should be worthy of his grasp. They were, therefore,
+ready to support the Tribune in what he proposed to do. It was
+necessary to Cicero's enemies that there should be some law by
+which Cicero might be condemned. It would not be within the power
+of Clodius, even with the Triumvirate at his back, to drive the man
+out of Rome and out of Italy, without an <span class='pagenum'><a
+name="Page_313" id="Page_313">313</a></span>alleged cause.
+Though justice had been tabooed, law was still in vogue. Now there
+was a matter as to which Cicero was open to attack. As Consul he
+had caused certain Roman citizens to be executed as conspirators,
+in the teeth of a law which enacted that no Roman citizen should be
+condemned to die except by a direct vote of the people. It had
+certainly become a maxim of the constitution of the Republic that a
+citizen should not be made to suffer death except by the voice of
+the people. The Valerian, the Porcian, and the Sempronian laws had
+all been passed to that effect. Now there had been no popular vote
+as to the execution of Lentulus and the other conspirators, who had
+been taken red-handed in Rome in the affair of Catiline. Their
+death had been decreed by the Senate, and the decree of the Senate
+had been carried out by Cicero; but no decree of the Senate had the
+power of a law. In spite of that decree the old law was in force;
+and no appeal to the people had been allowed to Lentulus. But there
+had grown up in the constitution a practice which had been supposed
+to override the Valerian and Porcian laws. In certain emergencies
+the Senate would call upon the Consuls to see that the Republic
+should suffer no injury, and it had been held that at such moments
+the Consuls were invested with an authority above all law. Cicero
+had been thus strengthened when, as Consul, he had struggled with
+Catiline; but it was an open question, as Cicero himself very well
+knew. In the year of his Consulship&mdash;the very year in which
+Lentulus and the others had been strangled&mdash;he had defended
+Rabirius, who was then accused of having killed a citizen thirty
+years before. Rabirius was charged with having slaughtered the
+Tribune Saturninus by consular authority, the Consuls of the day
+having been ordered to defend the Republic, as Cicero had been
+ordered. Rabirius probably had not killed Saturninus, nor did any
+one now care whether he had done so or not. The trial had been
+brought about notoriously by the agency of C&aelig;sar, who caused
+himself to be selected by the Pr&aelig;tor as one of the <span class=
+'pagenum'><a name="Page_314" id="Page_314">314</a></span>two
+judges for the occasion;<a name="FNanchor_274_274" id=
+"FNanchor_274_274"></a><a href="#Footnote_274_274" class=
+"fnanchor">274</a> and C&aelig;sar's object as notoriously was to
+lessen the authority of the Senate, and to support the democratic
+interest. Both Cicero and Hortensius defended Rabirius, but he was
+condemned by C&aelig;sar, and, as we are told, himself only escaped
+by using that appeal to the people in support of which he had
+himself been brought to trial. In this, as in so many of the
+forensic actions of the day, there had been an admixture of
+violence and law. We must, I think, acknowledge that there was the
+same leaven of illegality in the proceedings against Lentulus. It
+had no doubt been the intention of the constitution that a Consul,
+in the heat of an emergency, should use his personal authority for
+the protection of the Commonwealth, but it cannot be alleged that
+there was such an emergency, when the full Senate had had time to
+debate on the fate of the Catiline criminals. Both from
+C&aelig;sar's words as reported by Sallust, and from Cicero's as
+given to us by himself, we are aware that an idea of the illegality
+of the proceeding was present in the minds of Senators at the
+moment. But, though law was loved at Rome, all forensic and
+legislative proceedings were at this time carried on with monstrous
+illegality. Consuls consulted the heavens falsely; Tribunes used
+their veto violently; judges accepted bribes openly; the votes of
+the people were manipulated fraudulently. In the trial and escape
+of Rabirius, the laws were despised by those who pretended to
+vindicate them. Clodius had now become a Tribune by the means of
+certain legal provision, but yet in opposition to all law. In the
+conduct of the affair against Catiline Cicero seems to have been
+actuated by pure patriotism, and to have been supported by a fine
+courage; but he knew that in destroying Lentulus and Cethegus he
+subjected himself to certain dangers. He had willingly faced these
+dangers for the sake of the object in view. As long as he <span
+class='pagenum'><a name="Page_315" id="Page_315">
+315</a></span>might remain the darling of the people, as he was at
+that moment, he would no doubt be safe; but it was not given to any
+one to be for long the darling of the Roman people. Cicero bad
+become so by using an eloquence to which the Romans were peculiarly
+susceptible; but though they loved sweet tongues, long purses went
+farther with them. Since Cicero's Consulship he had done nothing to
+offend the people, except to remain occasionally out of their
+sight; but he had lost the brilliancy of his popularity, and he was
+aware that it was so.</p>
+
+<p>In discussing popularity in Rome we have to remember of what
+elements it was formed. We hear that this or that man was potent at
+some special time by the assistance coming to him from the popular
+voice. There was in Rome a vast population of idle men, who had
+been trained by their city life to look to the fact of their
+citizenship for their support, and who did, in truth, live on their
+citizenship. Of "panem et circenses" we have all heard, and know
+that eleemosynary bread and the public amusements of the day
+supplied the material and &aelig;sthetic wants of many Romans. But men
+so fed and so amused were sure to need further occupations. They
+became attached to certain friends, to certain patrons, and to
+certain parties, and soon learned that a return was expected for
+the food and for the excitement supplied to them. This they gave by
+holding themselves in readiness for whatever violence was needed
+from them, till it became notorious in Rome that a great party man
+might best attain his political object by fighting for it in the
+streets. This was the meaning of that saying of Crassus, that a man
+could not be considered rich till he could keep an army in his own
+pay. A popular vote obtained and declared by a faction fight in the
+forum was still a popular vote, and if supported by sufficient
+violence would be valid. There had been street fighting of the kind
+when Cicero had defended Caius Cornelius, in the year after his
+Pr&aelig;torship; there had been fighting of the kind when Rabirius had
+been condemned in his Consulship. We shall learn <span class=
+'pagenum'><a name="Page_316" id="Page_316">
+316</a></span>by-and-by to what extent such fighting prevailed
+when Clodius was killed by Milo's body-guard. At the period of
+which we are now writing, when Clodius was intent on pursuing
+Cicero to his ruin, it was a question with Cicero himself whether
+he would not trust to a certain faction in Rome to fight for him,
+and so to protect him. Though his popularity was on the
+wane&mdash;that general popularity which, we may presume, had been
+produced by the tone of his voice and the grace of his
+language&mdash;there still remained to him that other popularity
+which consisted, in truth, of the trained bands employed by the
+"boni" and the "optimates," and which might be used, if need were,
+in opposition to trained bands on the other side.</p>
+
+<p>The bill first proposed by Clodius to the people with the object
+of destroying Cicero did not mention Cicero, nor, in truth, refer
+to him. It purported to enact that he who had caused to be executed
+any Roman citizen not duly condemned to death, should himself be
+deprived of the privilege of water or fire.<a name=
+"FNanchor_275_275" id="FNanchor_275_275"></a><a href=
+"#Footnote_275_275" class="fnanchor">275</a> This condemned no
+suggested malefactor to death; but, in accordance with Roman law,
+made it impossible that any Roman so condemned should live within
+whatever bounds might be named for this withholding of fire and
+water. The penalty intended was banishment; but by this enactment
+no individual would be banished. Cicero, however, at once took the
+suggestion to himself, and put himself into mourning, as a man
+accused and about to be brought to his trial. He went about the
+streets accompanied by crowds armed for his protection; and Clodius
+also caused himself to be so accompanied. There came thus to be a
+question which might prevail should there be a general fight. The
+Senate was, as a body, on Cicero's side, but was quite unable to
+cope with the Triumvirate. C&aelig;sar no doubt had resolved that
+Cicero should be made to go, and C&aelig;sar was lord of the
+Triumvirate. On behalf of Cicero <span class='pagenum'><a name=
+"Page_317" id="Page_317">317</a></span>there was a large body
+of the conservative or oligarchical party who were still true to
+him; and they, too, all went into the usual public mourning,
+evincing their desire that the accused man should be rescued from
+his accusers.</p>
+
+<p>The bitterness of Clodius would be surprising did we not know
+how bitter had been Cicero's tongue. When the affair of the Bona
+Dea had taken place there was no special enmity between this
+debauched young man and the great Consul. Cicero, though his own
+life had ever been clean and well ordered, rather affected the
+company of fast young men when he found them to be witty as well as
+clever. This very Clodius had been in his good books till the
+affair of the Bona Dea. But now the Tribune's hatred was
+internecine. I have hitherto said nothing, and need say but little,
+of a certain disreputable lady named Clodia. She was the sister of
+Clodius and the wife of Metellus Celer. She was accused by public
+voice in Rome of living in incest with her brother, and of
+poisoning her husband. Cicero calls her afterward, in his defence
+of C&aelig;lius, "amica omnium." She had the nickname of Quadrantaria<a name="FNanchor_276_276" id="FNanchor_276_276"></a><a href=
+"#Footnote_276_276" class="fnanchor">276</a> given to her,
+because she frequented the public baths, at which the charge was a
+farthing. It must be said also of her, either in praise or in
+dispraise, that she was the Lesbia who inspired the muse of
+Catullus. It was rumored in Rome that she had endeavored to set her
+cap at Cicero. Cicero in his raillery had not spared the lady. To
+speak publicly the grossest evil of women was not opposed to any
+idea of gallantry current among the Romans. Our sense of chivalry,
+as well as decency, is disgusted by the language used by Horace to
+women who once to him were young and pretty, but have become old
+and ugly. The venom of Cicero's abuse of Clodia annoys us, and we
+have to remember that the gentle ideas which we have taken in with
+our mother's milk had not <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_318"
+id="Page_318">318</a></span>grown into use with the Romans. It
+is necessary that this woman's name should be mentioned, and it may
+appear here as she was one of the causes of that hatred which burnt
+between Clodius and Cicero, till Clodius was killed in a street
+row.</p>
+
+<p>It has been presumed that Cicero was badly advised in presuming
+publicly that the new law was intended against himself, and in
+taking upon himself the outward signs of a man under affliction.
+"The resolution," says Middleton, "of changing his gown was too
+hasty and inconsiderate, and helped to precipitate his ruin." He
+was sensible of his error when too late, and oft reproaches Atticus
+that, being a stander-by, and less heated with the game than
+himself, he would suffer him to make such blunders. And he quotes
+the words written to Atticus: "Here my judgment first failed me,
+or, indeed, brought me into trouble. We were blind, blind I say, in
+changing our raiment and in appealing to the
+populace. * * * I handed myself and all belonging to me over
+to my enemies, while you were looking on, while you were holding
+your peace; yes, you, who, if your wit in the matter was no better
+than mine, were impeded by no personal fears."<a name=
+"FNanchor_277_277" id="FNanchor_277_277"></a><a href=
+"#Footnote_277_277" class="fnanchor">277</a> But the reader
+should study the entire letter, and study it in the original, for
+no translator can give its true purport. This the reader must do
+before he can understand Cicero's state of mind when writing it, or
+his relation to Atticus; or the thoughts which distracted him when,
+in accordance with the advice of Atticus, he resolved, while yet
+uncondemned, to retire into banishment. The censure to which
+Atticus is subjected throughout this letter is that which a
+thoughtful, hesitating, scrupulous man is so often disposed to
+address to himself. After reminding Atticus of the sort of advice
+which should have been given&mdash;the want of which in the first
+moment of his exile he regrets&mdash;and doing this in words of
+which it is very difficult now to catch the <span class=
+'pagenum'><a name="Page_319" id="Page_319">319</a></span>exact
+flavor, he begs to be pardoned for his reproaches. "You will
+forgive me this," he says. "I blame myself more than I do you; but
+I look to you as a second self, and I make you a sharer with me of
+my own folly." I take this letter out of its course, and speak of
+it as connected with that terrible period of doubt to which it
+refers, in which he had to decide whether he would remain in Rome
+and fight it out, or run before his enemies. But in writing the
+letter afterward his mind was as much disturbed as when he did fly.
+I am inclined, therefore, to think that Middleton and others may
+have been wrong in blaming his flight, which they have done,
+because in his subsequent vacillating moods he blamed himself. How
+the battle might have gone had he remained, we have no evidence to
+show; but we do know that though he fled, he returned soon with
+renewed glory, and altogether overcame the attempt which had been
+made to destroy him.</p>
+
+<p>In this time of his distress a strong effort was made by the
+Senate to rescue him. It was proposed to them that they all as a
+body should go into mourning on his behalf; indeed, the Senate
+passed a vote to this effect, but were prevented by the two Consuls
+from carrying it out. As to what he had best do he and his friends
+were divided. Some recommended that he should remain where he was,
+and defend himself by street-fighting should it be necessary. In
+doing this he would acknowledge that law no longer prevailed in
+Rome&mdash;a condition of things to which many had given in their
+adherence, but with which Cicero would surely have been the last to
+comply. He himself, in his despair, thought for a time that the old
+Roman mode of escape would be preferable, and that he might with
+decorum end his life and his troubles by suicide. Atticus and
+others dissuaded him from this, and recommended him to fly. Among
+these Cato and Hortensius have both been named. To this advice he
+at last yielded, and it may be doubted whether any better could
+have been given. Lawlessness, which had been rampant in Rome
+before, had, under the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_320" id=
+"Page_320">320</a></span>Triumvirate, become almost lawful. It
+was C&aelig;sar's intention to carry out his will with such
+compliance with the forms of the Republic as might suit him, but in
+utter disregard to all such forms when they did not suit him. The
+banishment of Cicero was one of the last steps taken by C&aelig;sar
+before he left Rome for his campaigns in Gaul. He was already in
+command of the legions, and was just without the city. He had
+endeavored to buy Cicero, but had failed. Having failed, he had
+determined to be rid of him. Clodius was but his tool, as were
+Pompey and the two Consuls. Had Cicero endeavored to support
+himself by violence in Rome, his contest would, in fact have been
+with C&aelig;sar.</p>
+
+<p>Cicero, before he went, applied for protection personally to
+Piso the Consul, and to Pompey. Gabinius, the other Consul, had
+already declared his purpose to the Senate, but Piso was bound to
+him by family ties. He himself relates to us in his oration, spoken
+after his return, against this Piso, the manner of the meeting
+between him and Rome's chief officer. Piso told him&mdash;so at
+least Cicero declared in the Senate, and we have heard of no
+contradiction&mdash;that Gabinius was so driven by debts as to be
+unable to hold up his head without a rich province; that he
+himself, Piso, could only hope to get a province by taking part
+with Gabinius; that any application to the Consuls was useless, and
+that every one must look after himself.<a name="FNanchor_278_278"
+id="FNanchor_278_278"></a><a href="#Footnote_278_278" class=
+"fnanchor">278</a> Concerning his appeal to Pompey two stories
+have been given to us, neither of which appears to be true.
+Plutarch says that when Cicero had travelled out from Rome to
+Pompey's Alban villa, Pompey ran out of the back-door to avoid
+meeting him. Plutarch cared more for a good story than for
+accuracy, and is not worthy of much credit as to details unless
+when corroborated. The other account is based on Cicero's assertion
+that he did see Pompey on this occasion. Nine or ten years after
+the meeting he refers to it in a letter to <span class='pagenum'><a
+name="Page_321" id="Page_321">321</a></span>Atticus, which
+leaves no doubt as to the fact. The story founded on that letter
+declares that Cicero threw himself bodily at his old friend's feet,
+and that Pompey did not lend a hand to raise him, but told him
+simply that everything was in C&aelig;sar's hands. This narrative
+is, I think, due to a misinterpretation of Cicero's words, though
+it is given by a close translation of them. He is describing Pompey
+when C&aelig;sar after his Gallic wars had crossed the Rubicon, and
+the two late Triumvirates&mdash;the third having perished miserably
+in the East&mdash;were in arms against each other. "Alter ardet
+furore et scelere" he says.<a name="FNanchor_279_279" id=
+"FNanchor_279_279"></a><a href="#Footnote_279_279" class=
+"fnanchor">279</a> C&aelig;sar is pressing on unscrupulous in his
+passion. "Alter is qui nos sibi quondam ad pedes stratos ne
+sublevabat quidem, qui se nihil contra hujus voluntatem aiebat
+facere posse." "That other one," he continues&mdash;meaning Pompey,
+and pursuing his picture of the present contrast&mdash;"who in days
+gone by would not even lift me when I lay at his feet, and told me
+that he could do nothing but as C&aelig;sar wished it." This little
+supposed detail of biography has been given, no doubt, from an
+accurate reading of the words; but in it the spirit of the writer's
+mind as he wrote it has surely been missed. The prostration of
+which he spoke, from which Pompey would not raise him, the memory
+of which was still so bitter to him, was not a prostration of the
+body. I hold it to have been impossible that Cicero should have
+assumed such an attitude before Pompey, or that he would so have
+written to Atticus had he done so. It would have been neither Roman
+nor Ciceronian, as displayed by Cicero to Pompey. He had gone to
+his old ally and told him of his trouble, and had no doubt reminded
+him of those promises of assistance which Pompey had so often made.
+Then Pompey had refused to help him, and had assured him, with too
+much truth, that C&aelig;sar's will was everything. Again, we have
+to remember that in judging of the meaning of words between two
+such <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_322" id="Page_322">
+322</a></span>correspondents as Cicero and Atticus, we must read
+between the lines, and interpret the words by creating for
+ourselves something of the spirit in which they were written and in
+which they were received. I cannot imagine that, in describing to
+Atticus what had occurred at that interview nine years after it had
+taken place, Cicero had intended it to be understood that he had
+really grovelled in the dust.</p>
+
+<p>Toward the end of March he started from Rome, intending to take
+refuge among his friends in Sicily. On the same day Clodius brought
+in a bill directed against Cicero by name and caused it to be
+carried by the people, "Ut Marco Tullio aqua et igni interdictum
+sit"&mdash;that it should be illegal to supply Cicero with fire and
+water. The law when passed forbade any one to harbor the criminal
+within four hundred miles of Rome, and declared the doing so to be
+a capital offence. It is evident, from the action of those who
+obeyed the law, and of those who did not, that legal results were
+not feared so much as the ill-will of those who had driven Cicero
+to his exile. They who refused him succor did do so not because to
+give it him would be illegal, but lest C&aelig;sar and Pompey would
+be offended. It did not last long, and during the short period of
+his exile he found perhaps more of friendship than of enmity; but
+he directed his steps in accordance with the bearing of
+party-spirit. We are told that he was afraid to go to Athens,
+because at Athens lived that Autronius whom he had refused to
+defend. Autronius had been convicted of conspiracy and banished,
+and, having been a Catilinarian conspirator, had been in truth on
+C&aelig;sar's side. Nor were geographical facts sufficiently
+established to tell Cicero what places were and what were not
+without the forbidden circle. He sojourned first at Vibo, in the
+extreme south of Italy, intending to pass from thence into Sicily.
+It was there that he learned that a certain distance had been
+prescribed; but it seems that he had already heard that the
+Proconsular Governor of the island would not receive him, fearing
+C&aelig;sar. Then he came north from Vibo <span class='pagenum'><a
+name="Page_323" id="Page_323">323</a></span>to Brundisium,
+that being the port by which travellers generally went from Italy
+to the East. He had determined to leave his family in Rome,
+feeling, probably, that it would be easier for him to find a
+temporary home for himself than for him and them together. And
+there were money difficulties in which Atticus helped him.<a name=
+"FNanchor_280_280" id="FNanchor_280_280"></a><a href=
+"#Footnote_280_280" class="fnanchor">280</a> Atticus, always
+wealthy, had now become a very rich man by the death of an uncle.
+We do not know of what nature were the money arrangements made by
+Cicero at the time, but there can be no doubt that the losses by
+his exile were very great. There was a thorough disruption of his
+property, for which the subsequent generosity of his country was
+unable altogether to atone. But this sat lightly on Cicero's heart.
+Pecuniary losses never weighed heavily with him.</p>
+
+<p>As he journeyed back from Vibo to Brundisium friends were very
+kind to him, in spite of the law. Toward the end of the speech
+which he made five years afterward on behalf of his friend C.
+Plancius he explains the debt of gratitude which he owed to his
+client, whose kindness to him in his exile had been very great. He
+commences his story of the goodness of Plancius by describing the
+generosity of the towns on the road to Brundisium, and the
+hospitality of his friend Flavius, who had received him at his
+house in the neighborhood of that town, and had placed him safely
+on board a ship when at last he resolved to cross over to
+Dyrrachium. There were many schemes running in his head at this
+time. At one period he had resolved to pass through Macedonia into
+Asia, and to remain for a while at Cyzicum. This idea he expresses
+in a letter to his wife written from Brundisium. Then he goes,
+wailing no doubt, but in words which to me seem very natural as
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_324" id="Page_324">
+324</a></span>coming from a husband in such a condition: "O me
+perditum, O me afflictum;"<a name="FNanchor_281_281" id=
+"FNanchor_281_281"></a><a href="#Footnote_281_281" class=
+"fnanchor">281</a> exclamations which it is impossible to
+translate, as they refer to his wife's separation from himself
+rather than to his own personal sufferings. "How am I to ask you to
+come to me?" he says; "you a woman, ill in health, worn out in body
+and in spirit. I cannot ask you! Must I then live without you? It
+must be so, I think. If there be any hope of my return, it is you
+must look to it, you that must strengthen it; but if, as I fear,
+the thing is done, then come to me. If I can have you I shall not
+be altogether destroyed." No doubt these are wailings; but is a man
+unmanly because he so wails to the wife of his bosom? Other humans
+have written prettily about women: it was common for Romans to do
+so. Catullus desires from Lesbia as many kisses as are the stars of
+night or the sands of Libya. Horace swears that he would perish for
+Chloe if Chloe might be left alive. "When I am dying," says
+Tibullus to Delia, "may I be gazing at you; may my last grasp hold
+your hand." Propertius tells Cynthia that she stands to him in lieu
+of home and parents, and all the joys of life. "Whether he be sad
+with his friends or happy, Cynthia does it all." The language in
+each case is perfect; but what other Roman was there of whom we
+have evidence that he spoke to his wife like this? Ovid in his
+letters from his banishment says much of his love for his wife; but
+there is no passion expressed in anything that Ovid wrote.</p>
+
+<p>Clodius, as soon as the enactment against Cicero became law,
+caused it be carried into effect with all its possible cruelties.
+The criminal's property was confiscated. The house on the Palatine
+Hill was destroyed, and the goods were put up to auction, with, as
+we are told, a great lack of buyers. His choicest treasures were
+carried away by the Consuls themselves. Piso, who had lived near
+him in Rome, got for himself and for <span class='pagenum'><a name=
+"Page_325" id="Page_325">325</a></span>his father-in-law the
+rich booty from the town house. The country villas were also
+destroyed, and Gabinius, who had a country house close by Cicero's
+Tusculan retreat, took even the very shrubs out of the garden. He
+tells the story of the greed and enmity of the Consuls in the
+speech he made after his return, Pro Domo Sua,<a name=
+"FNanchor_282_282" id="FNanchor_282_282"></a><a href=
+"#Footnote_282_282" class="fnanchor">282</a> pleading for the
+restitution of his household property. "My house on the Palatine
+was burnt," he says, "not by any accident, but by arson. In the
+mean time the Consuls were feasting, and were congratulating
+themselves among the conspirators, when one boasted that he had
+been Catiline's friend, the other that Cethegus had been his
+cousin." By this he implies that the conspiracy which during his
+Consulship had been so odious to Rome was now, in these days of the
+Triumvirate, again in favor among Roman aristocrats.</p>
+
+<p>He went across from Brundisium to Dyrrachium, and from thence to
+Thessalonica, where he was treated with most loving-kindness by
+Plancius, who was Qu&aelig;stor in these parts, and who came down to
+Dyrrachium to meet him, clad in mourning for the occasion. This was
+the Plancius whom he afterward defended, and indeed he was bound to
+do so. Plancius seems to have had but little dread of the law,
+though he was a Roman officer employed in the very province to the
+government of which the present Consul Piso had already been
+appointed. Thessalonica was within four hundred miles, and yet
+Cicero lived there with Plancius for some months.</p>
+
+<p>The letters from Cicero during his exile are to me very
+touching, though I have been told so often that in having written
+them he lacked the fortitude of a Roman. Perhaps I am more capable
+of appreciating natural humanity than Roman fortitude. We remember
+the story of the Spartan boy who allowed the fox to bite him
+beneath his frock without crying. I think we may imagine that he
+refrained from tears in public, before some herd of school-fellows,
+or a bench of masters, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_326" id=
+"Page_326">326</a></span>or amid the sternness of parental
+authority; but that he told his sister afterward how he had been
+tortured, or his mother as he lay against her bosom, or perhaps his
+chosen chum. Such reticences are made dignified by the occasion,
+when something has to be won by controlling the expression to which
+nature uncontrolled would give utterance, but are not in themselves
+evidence either of sagacity or of courage. Roman fortitude was but
+a suit of armor to be worn on state occasions. If we come across a
+warrior with his crested helmet and his sword and his spear, we
+see, no doubt, an impressive object. If we could find him in his
+night-shirt, the same man would be there, but those who do not look
+deeply into things would be apt to despise him because his grand
+trappings were absent. Chance has given us Cicero in his
+night-shirt. The linen is of such fine texture that we are
+delighted with it, but we despise the man because he wore a
+garment&mdash;such as we wear ourselves indeed, though when we wear
+it nobody is then brought in to look at us.</p>
+
+<p>There is one most touching letter written from Thessalonica to
+his brother, by whom, after thoughts vacillating this way and that,
+he was unwilling to be visited, thinking that a meeting would bring
+more of pain than of service. "Mi frater, mi frater, mi frater!" he
+begins. The words in English would hardly give all the pathos. "Did
+you think that I did not write because I am angry, or that I did
+not wish to see you? I angry with you! But I could not endure to be
+seen by you. You would not have seen your brother; not him whom you
+had left; not him whom you had known; not him whom, weeping as you
+went away, you had dismissed, weeping himself as he strove to
+follow you."<a name="FNanchor_283_283" id="FNanchor_283_283"></a><a
+href="#Footnote_283_283" class="fnanchor">283</a> Then he heaps
+blame on his own head, bitterly accusing himself because he had
+brought his brother to such a pass of sorrow. In this letter he
+throws great blame upon Hortensius, whom together with Pompey he
+accuses of <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_327" id=
+"Page_327">327</a></span>betraying him. What truth there may
+have been in this accusation as to Hortensius we have no means of
+saying. He couples Pompey in the same charge, and as to Pompey's
+treatment of him there can be no doubt. Pompey had been untrue to
+his promises because of his bond with C&aelig;sar. It is probable
+that Hortensius had failed to put himself forward on Cicero's
+behalf with that alacrity which the one advocate had expected from
+the other. Cicero and Hortensius were friends afterward, but so
+were Cicero and Pompey. Cicero was forgiving by nature, and also by
+self-training. It did not suit his purposes to retain his enmities.
+Had there been a possibility of reconciling Antony to the cause of
+the "optimates" after the Philippics, he would have availed himself
+of it.</p>
+
+<p>Cicero at one time intended to go to Buthrotum in Epirus, where
+Atticus possessed a house and property; but he changed his purpose.
+He remained at Thessalonica till November, and then returned to
+Dyrrachium, having all through his exile been kept alive by tidings
+of steps taken for his recall. There seems very soon to have grown
+up a feeling in Rome that the city had disgraced itself by
+banishing such a man; and C&aelig;sar had gone to his provinces. We
+can well imagine that when he had once left Rome, with all his
+purposes achieved, having so far quieted the tongue of the strong
+speaker who might have disturbed them, he would take no further
+steps to perpetuate the orator's banishment. Then Pompey and
+Clodius soon quarrelled. Pompey, without C&aelig;sar to direct him,
+found the arrogance of the Patrician Tribune insupportable. We hear
+of wheels within wheels, and stories within stories, in the drama
+of Roman history as it was played at this time. Together with
+Cicero, it had been necessary to C&aelig;sar's projects that Cato
+also should be got out of Rome; and this had been managed by means
+of Clodius, who had a bill passed for the honorable employment of
+Cato on state purposes in Cyprus. Cato had found himself obliged to
+go. It was as though our Prime-minister had got parliamentary
+authority for sending a noisy <span class='pagenum'><a name=
+"Page_328" id="Page_328">328</a></span>member of the
+Opposition to Asiatic Turkey for six months There was an attempt,
+or an alleged attempt, of Clodius to have Pompey murdered; and
+there was street-fighting, so that Pompey was besieged, or
+pretended to be besieged, in his own house. "We might as well seek
+to set a charivari to music as to write the history of this
+political witches' revel," says Mommsen, speaking of the state of
+Rome when C&aelig;sar was gone, Cicero banished, and Pompey
+supposed to be in the ascendant.<a name="FNanchor_284_284" id=
+"FNanchor_284_284"></a><a href="#Footnote_284_284" class=
+"fnanchor">284</a> There was, at any rate, quarrelling between
+Clodius and Pompey, in the course of which Pompey was induced to
+consent to Cicero's return. Then Clodius took upon himself, in
+revenge, to turn against the Triumvirate altogether, and to
+repudiate even C&aelig;sar himself. But it was all a vain
+hurly-burly, as to which C&aelig;sar, when he heard the details in
+Gaul, could only have felt how little was to be gained by
+maintaining his alliance with Pompey. He had achieved his purpose,
+which he could not have done without the assistance of Crassus,
+whose wealth, and of Pompey, whose authority, stood highest in
+Rome; and now, having had his legions voted to him, and his
+provinces, and his prolonged term of years, he cared nothing for
+either of them.</p>
+
+<p>There is a little story which must be repeated, as against
+Cicero, in reference to this period of his exile, because it has
+been told in all records of his life. Were I to omit the little
+story, it would seem as though I shunned the records which have
+been repeated as opposed to his credit. He had written, some time
+back, a squib in which he had been severe upon the elder Curio; so
+it is supposed; but it matters little who was the object or what
+the subject. This had got wind in Rome, as such matters do
+sometimes, and he now feared that it would do him a mischief with
+the Curios and the friends of the Curios. <span class='pagenum'><a
+name="Page_329" id="Page_329">329</a></span>The authorship was
+only matter of gossip. Could it not be denied? "As it is written,"
+says Cicero, "in a style inferior to that which is usual to me, can
+it not be shown not to have been mine?"<a name="FNanchor_285_285"
+id="FNanchor_285_285"></a><a href="#Footnote_285_285" class=
+"fnanchor">285</a> Had Cicero possessed all the Christian
+virtues, as we hope that prelates and pastors possess them in this
+happy land, he would not have been betrayed into, at any rate, the
+expression of such a wish. As it is, the enemies of Cicero must
+make the most of it. His friends, I think, will look upon it
+leniently.</p>
+
+<p>Continued efforts were made among Cicero's friends at Rome to
+bring him back, with which he was not altogether contented. He
+argues the matter repeatedly with Atticus, not always in the best
+temper. His friends at Rome were, he thought, doing the matter
+amiss: they would fail, and he would still have to finish his days
+abroad. Atticus, in his way to Epirus, visits him at Dyrrachium,
+and he is sure that Atticus would not have left Rome but that the
+affair was hopeless. The reader of the correspondence is certainly
+led to the belief that Atticus must have been the most patient of
+friends; but he feels, at the same time, that Atticus would not
+have been patient had not Cicero been affectionate and true. The
+Consuls for the new year were Lentulus and Metellus Nepos. The
+former was Cicero's declared friend, and the other had already
+abandoned his enmity. Clodius was no longer Tribune, and Pompey had
+been brought to yield. The Senate were all but unanimous. But there
+was still life in Clodius and his party; and day dragged itself
+after day, and month after month, while Cicero still lingered at
+Dyrrachium, waiting till a bill should have been passed by the
+people. Pompey, who was never whole-hearted in anything, had
+declared that a bill voted by the people would be necessary. The
+bill at last was voted, on the 14th of August, and Cicero, who knew
+well what was being done at Rome, passed over from Dyrrachium to
+Brundisium <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_330" id=
+"Page_330">330</a></span>on the same day, having been a year
+and four months absent from Rome. During the year <span class=
+"smcap">b.c.</span> 57, up to the time of his return, he wrote but
+three letters that have come to us&mdash;two very short notes to
+Atticus, in the first of which he declares that he will come over
+on the authority of a decree of the Senate, without waiting for a
+law. In the second he falls again into despair, declaring that
+everything is over. In the third he asks Metellus for his aid,
+telling the Consul that unless it be given soon the man for whom it
+is asked will no longer be living to receive it. Metellus did give
+the aid very cordially.</p>
+
+<p>It has been remarked that Cicero did nothing for literature
+during his banishment, either by writing essays or preparing
+speeches; and it has been implied that the prostration of mind
+arising from his misfortunes must have been indeed complete, when a
+man whose general life was made marvellous by its fecundity had
+been repressed into silence. It should, however, be borne in mind
+that there could be no inducement for the writing of speeches when
+there was no opportunity of delivering them. As to his essays,
+including what we call his Philosophy and his Rhetoric, they who
+are familiar with his works will remember how apt he was, in all
+that he produced, to refer to the writings of others. He translates
+and he quotes, and he makes constant use of the arguments and
+illustrations of those who have gone before him. He was a man who
+rarely worked without the use of a library. When I think how
+impossible it would be for me to repeat this oft-told tale of
+Cicero's life without a crowd of books within reach of my hand, I
+can easily understand why Cicero was silent at Thessalonica and
+Dyrrachium. It has been remarked also by a modern critic that we
+find "in the letters from exile a carelessness and inaccuracy of
+expression which contrasts strongly with the style of his happier
+days." I will not for a moment put my judgment in such a matter in
+opposition to that of Mr. Tyrrell&mdash;but I should myself have
+been inclined rather to say <span class='pagenum'><a name=
+"Page_331" id="Page_331">331</a></span>that the style of
+Cicero's letters varies constantly, being very different when used
+to Atticus, or to his brother, or to lighter friends such as Poetus
+and Trebatius; and very different again when business of state was
+in hand, as are his letters to Decimus Brutus, Cassius Brutus, and
+Plancus. To be correct in familiar letters is not to charm. A
+studied negligence is needed to make such work live to
+posterity&mdash;a grace of loose expression which may indeed have
+been made easy by use, but which is far from easy to the idle and
+unpractised writer. His sorrow, perhaps, required a style of its
+own. I have not felt my own untutored perception of the language to
+be offended by unfitting slovenliness in the expression of his
+grief.</p>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_332" id="Page_332">
+332-334</a></span></p>
+
+<h4>APPENDICES TO VOLUME I.</h4>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_335" id="Page_335">
+335</a></span></p>
+
+<h4><a name="APPENDIX_A" id="APPENDIX_A"></a>APPENDIX A.</h4>
+
+<h5>(<i>See</i> ch. II., note [39])</h5>
+
+<h5><i>THE BATTLE OF THE EAGLE AND THE SERPENT.</i></h5>
+
+<p>Homer, Iliad, lib. xii, 200:</p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">&Omicron;&#7989; &#8165;' &#7956;&tau;&iota; &mu;&epsilon;&rho;&mu;&#8053;&rho;&iota;&zeta;&omicron;&nu; &#7952;&phi;&epsilon;&sigma;&tau;&alpha;&#8057;&tau;&epsilon;&sigmaf; &pi;&alpha;&rho;&#8048; &tau;&#8049;&phi;&rho;&omega;&iota;.</span>
+<span class="i0">&#8012;&rho;&nu;&iota;&sigmaf; &gamma;&#8049;&rho; &sigma;&phi;&iota;&nu; &#7952;&pi;&#8134;&lambda;&theta;&epsilon; &pi;&epsilon;&rho;&eta;&sigma;&#8051;&mu;&epsilon;&nu;&alpha;&iota; &mu;&epsilon;&mu;&alpha;&#8182;&sigma;&iota;&nu;,</span>
+<span class="i0">&#913;&#7984;&#949;&#964;&#8056;&#962; &#8017;&#968;&#953;&#960;&#8051;&#964;&eta;&#962; &#7952;&#960;' &#7936;&#961;&#953;&#963;&#964;&#949;&#961;&#8048; &#955;&#945;&#8056;&#957; &#7952;&#8051;&#961;&#947;&omega;&#957;,</span>
+<span class="i0">&#934;&#959;&#953;&#957;&#8053;&#949;&#957;&#964;&#945; &#948;&#961;&#8049;&#954;&#959;&#957;&#964;&#945; &#966;&#8051;&#961;&omega;&#957; &#8000;&#957;&#8059;&#967;&#949;&#963;&#963;&#953; &#960;&#8051;&#955;&omega;&#961;&omicron;&nu;,</span>
+<span class="i0">&#918;&#969;&#8056;&#957; &#7956;&#964;' &#7936;&#963;&#960;&#945;&#943;&#961;&#959;&#957;&#964;&#945;&#903; &#954;&#945;&#8054; &#959;&#8020;&#960;&omega; &#955;&#8053;&#952;&#949;&#964;&#959; &#967;&#8049;&#961;&#956;&#951;&#962;.</span>
+<span class="i0">&#922;&#8057;&#968;&#949; &#947;&#8048;&#961; &#945;&#8016;&#964;&#8056;&#957; &#7956;&#967;&#959;&#957;&#964;&#945; &#954;&#945;&#964;&#8048; &#963;&#964;&#8134;&#952;&#959;&#962; &#960;&#945;&#961;&#8048; &#948;&#949;&#953;&#961;&#8053;&#957;,</span>
+<span class="i0">&#7992;&#948;&#957;&#969;&#952;&#949;&#8054;&#962; &#8000;&#960;&#8055;&#963;&#959;&#903; &#8001; &#948;' &#7936;&#960;&#8056; &#7956;&#952;&#949;&#957; &#7974;&#954;&#949; &#967;&#945;&#956;&#945;&#950;&#949;,</span>
+<span class="i0">&#7944;&#955;&#947;&#8053;&#963;&#945;&#962; &#8000;&#948;&#8059;&#957;&#8131;&#963;&#953;, &#956;&#8051;&#963;&#8179; &#948;' &#7952;&#957;&#8054; &#954;&#8049;&#946;&#946;&#945;&#955;' &#8001;&#956;&#8055;&#955;&#8179;&#903;</span>
+<span class="i0">&#913;&#8016;&#964;&#8056;&#962; &#948;&#8050; &#954;&#955;&#8049;&#947;&#958;&#945;&#962; &#960;&#8051;&#964;&#949;&#964;&#959; &#960;&#957;&#959;&#8135;&#953;&#962; &#7936;&#957;&#8051;&#956;&#959;&#953;&#959;.</span></div>
+</div>
+
+<p>Pope's translation of the passage, book xii, 231:</p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+<div class="stanza"><span class="i0">"A signal omen stopp'd the
+passing host,</span> <span class="i0">The martial fury in their
+wonder lost.</span> <span class="i0">Jove's bird on sounding
+pinions beat the skies;</span> <span class="i0">A bleeding serpent,
+of enormous size,</span> <span class="i0">His talons trussed;
+alive, and curling round,</span> <span class="i0">He stung the
+bird, whose throat received the wound.</span> <span class="i0">Mad
+with the smart, he drops the fatal prey,</span> <span class="i0">In
+airy circles wings his painful way,</span> <span class="i0">Floats
+on the winds, and rends the heav'ns with cries.</span> <span class=
+"i0">Amid the host the fallen serpent lies.</span> <span class=
+"i0">They, pale with terror, mark its spires unroll'd,</span> <span
+class="i0">And Jove's portent with beating hearts
+behold."</span></div>
+</div>
+
+<p>Lord Derby's Iliad, book xii, 236:</p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+<div class="stanza"><span class="i0">"For this I read the future,
+if indeed</span> <span class="i0">To us, about to cross, this sign
+from Heaven</span> <span class="i0">Was sent, to leftward of the
+astonished crowd:</span> <span class="i0">A soaring eagle, bearing
+in his claws</span> <span class="i0">A dragon huge of size, of
+blood-red hue,</span> <span class="i0">Alive; yet dropped him ere
+he reached his home,</span> <span class="i0">Nor to his nestlings
+bore the intended prey."</span></div>
+</div>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_336" id="Page_336">
+336</a></span>Cicero's telling of the story:</p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+<div class="stanza"><span class="i0">"Hic Jovis altisoni subito
+pinnata satelles,</span> <span class="i0">Arboris e trunco
+serpentis saucia morsu,</span> <span class="i0">Ipsa feris subigit
+transfigens unguibus anguem</span> <span class="i0">Semianimum, et
+varia graviter cervice micantem.</span> <span class="i0">Quem se
+intorquentem lanians, rostroque cruentans,</span> <span class=
+"i0">Jam satiata animum, jam duros ulta dolores,</span> <span
+class="i0">Abjicit efflantem, et laceratum affligit in unda;</span>
+<span class="i0">Seque obitu a solis nitidos convertit ad
+ortus."</span></div>
+</div>
+
+<p>Voltaire's translation:</p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+<div class="stanza"><span class="i0">"Tel on voit cet oiseau qui
+porte le tonnerre,</span> <span class="i0">Bless&eacute; par un
+serpent &eacute;lanc&eacute; de la terre;</span> <span class=
+"i0">Il s'envole, il entra&icirc;ne au s&eacute;jour
+azur&eacute;</span> <span class="i0">L'ennemi tortueux dont il est
+entour&eacute;.</span> <span class="i0">Le sang tombe des airs. Il
+d&eacute;chire, il d&eacute;vore</span> <span class="i0">Le reptile
+acharn&eacute; qui le combat encore;</span> <span class="i0">Il le
+perce, il le tient sous ses ongles vainqueurs;</span> <span class=
+"i0">Par cent coups redoubl&eacute;s il venge ses douleurs.</span>
+<span class="i0">Le monstre, en expirant, se d&eacute;bat, se
+replie;</span> <span class="i0">Il exhale en poisons les restes de
+sa vie;</span> <span class="i0">Et l'aigle, tout sanglant, fier et
+victorieux,</span> <span class="i0">Le rejette en fureur, et plane
+au haut des cieux."</span></div>
+</div>
+
+<p>Virgil's version, &AElig;neid, lib. xi., 751:</p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+<div class="stanza"><span class="i0">"Utque volans alte raptum quum
+fulva draconem</span> <span class="i0">Fert aquila, implicuitque
+pedes, atque unguibus h&aelig;sit</span> <span class="i0">Saucius at
+serpens sinuosa volumina versat,</span> <span class=
+"i0">Arrectisque horret squamis, et sibilat ore,</span> <span
+class="i0">Arduus insurgens. Illa haud minus urget obunco</span>
+<span class="i0">Luctantem rostro; simul &aelig;thera verberat
+alis."</span></div>
+</div>
+
+<p>Dryden's translation from Virgil's &AElig;neid, book xi.:</p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+<div class="stanza"><span class="i0">"So stoops the yellow eagle
+from on high,</span> <span class="i0">And bears a speckled serpent
+through the sky;</span> <span class="i0">Fastening his crooked
+talons on the prey,</span> <span class="i0">The prisoner hisses
+through the liquid way;</span> <span class="i0">Resists the royal
+hawk, and though opprest,</span> <span class="i0">She fights in
+volumes, and erects her crest.</span> <span class="i0">Turn'd to
+her foe, she stiffens every scale,</span> <span class="i0">And
+shoots her forky tongue, and whisks her threatening tail.</span>
+<span class="i0">Against the victor all defence is weak.</span>
+<span class="i0">Th' imperial bird still plies her with his
+beak:</span><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_337" id="Page_337">337</a></span> <span class="i0">He tears her bowels,
+and her breast he gores,</span> <span class="i0">Then claps his
+pinions, and securely soars."</span></div>
+</div>
+
+<p>Pitt's translation, book xi.:</p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+<div class="stanza"><span class="i0">"As when th' imperial eagle
+soars on high,</span> <span class="i0">And bears some speckled
+serpent through the sky,</span> <span class="i0">While her sharp
+talons gripe the bleeding prey,</span> <span class="i0">In many a
+fold her curling volumes play,</span> <span class="i0">Her starting
+brazen scales with horror rise,</span> <span class="i0">The
+sanguine flames flash dreadful from her eyes</span> <span class=
+"i0">She writhes, and hisses at her foe, in vain,</span> <span
+class="i0">Who wins at ease the wide aerial plain,</span> <span
+class="i0">With her strong hooky beak the captive plies,</span>
+<span class="i0">And bears the struggling prey triumphant through
+the skies."</span></div>
+</div>
+
+<p>Shelley's version of the battle, The Revolt of Islam, canto
+i.:</p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+<div class="stanza"><span class="i0">"For in the air do I behold
+indeed</span> <span class="i0">An eagle and a serpent wreathed in
+fight,</span> <span class="i0">And now relaxing its impetuous
+flight,</span> <span class="i0">Before the aerial rock on which I
+stood</span> <span class="i0">The eagle, hovering, wheeled to left
+and right,</span> <span class="i0">And hung with lingering wings
+over the flood,</span> <span class="i00">And startled with its yells
+the wide air's solitude</span><span class="i0">&nbsp;</span>
+
+<span class="i0">"A shaft of light upon its
+wings descended,</span> <span class="i0">And every golden feather
+gleamed therein&mdash;</span> <span class="i0">Feather and scale
+inextricably blended</span> <span class="i0">The serpent's mailed
+and many-colored skin</span> <span class="i0">Shone through the
+plumes, its coils were twined within</span> <span class="i0">By
+many a swollen and knotted fold, and high</span> <span class=
+"i0">And far, the neck receding lithe and thin,</span> <span class=
+"i0">Sustained a crested head, which warily</span> <span class=
+"i00">Shifted and glanced before the eagle's steadfast
+eye.</span><span class="i0">&nbsp;</span>
+
+<span class="i0">"Around,
+around, in ceaseless circles wheeling,</span> <span class="i0">With
+clang of wings and scream, the eagle sailed</span> <span class=
+"i0">Incessantly&mdash;sometimes on high concealing</span> <span
+class="i0">Its lessening orbs, sometimes, as if it failed,</span>
+<span class="i0">Drooped through the air, and still it shrieked and
+wailed,</span> <span class="i0">And casting back its eager head,
+with beak</span> <span class="i0">And talon unremittingly
+assailed</span> <span class="i0">The wreathed serpent, who did ever
+seek</span> <span class="i00">Upon his enemy's heart a mortal wound
+to wreak</span><span class="i0">&nbsp;</span>
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_338" id="Page_338">338</a></span>
+<span class="i0">"What life, what power was kindled, and arose</span> <span class=
+"i0">Within the sphere of that appalling fray!</span> <span class=
+"i0">For, from the encounter of those wond'rous foes,</span> <span
+class="i0">A vapor like the sea's suspended spray</span> <span
+class="i0">Hung gathered; in the void air, far away,</span> <span
+class="i0">Floated the shattered plumes; bright scales did
+leap,</span> <span class="i0">Where'er the eagle's talons made
+their way,</span> <span class="i0">Like sparks into the darkness;
+as they sweep,</span> <span class="i00">Blood stains the snowy foam
+of the tumultuous deep.</span>
+
+<span class="i0">&nbsp;</span><span class="i0">"Swift chances
+in that combat&mdash;many a check,</span> <span class="i0">And many
+a change&mdash;a dark and wild turmoil;</span> <span class=
+"i0">Sometimes the snake around his enemy's neck</span> <span
+class="i0">Locked in stiff rings his adamantine coil,</span> <span
+class="i0">Until the eagle, faint with pain and toil,</span> <span
+class="i0">Remitted his strong flight, and near the sea</span>
+<span class="i0">Languidly fluttered, hopeless so to foil</span>
+<span class="i0">His adversary, who then reared on high</span>
+<span class="i00">His red and burning crest, radiant with
+victory.</span>
+<span class="i0">&nbsp;</span>
+<span class="i0">"Then on the
+white edge of the bursting surge,</span> <span class="i0">Where
+they had sunk together, would the snake</span> <span class=
+"i0">Relax his suffocating grasp, and scourge</span> <span class=
+"i0">The wind with his wild writhings; for, to break</span> <span
+class="i0">That chain of torment, the vast bird would shake</span>
+<span class="i0">The strength of his unconquerable wings</span>
+<span class="i0">As in despair, and with his sinewy neck</span>
+<span class="i0">Dissolve in sudden shock those linked
+rings,</span> <span class="i00">Then soar&mdash;as swift as smoke
+from a volcano springs.</span><span class="i0">&nbsp;</span><span class="i0">"Wile baffled
+wile, and strength encountered strength,</span> <span class=
+"i0">Thus long, but unprevailing&mdash;the event</span> <span
+class="i0">Of that portentous fight appeared at length.</span>
+<span class="i0">Until the lamp of day was almost spent</span>
+<span class="i0">It had endured, when lifeless, stark, and
+rent,</span> <span class="i0">Hung high that mighty serpent, and at
+last</span> <span class="i0">Fell to the sea, while o'er the
+continent,</span> <span class="i0">With clang of wings and scream,
+the eagle past,</span> <span class="i00">Heavily borne away on the
+exhausted blast."</span></div>
+</div>
+
+<p>I have repudiated the adverse criticism on Cicero's poetry which
+has been attributed to Juvenal; but, having done so, am bound in
+fairness to state that which is to be found elsewhere in any later
+author of renown <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_339" id=
+"Page_339">339</a></span>as a classic. In the treatise De
+Oratoribus, attributed to Tacitus, and generally published with his
+works by him&mdash;a treatise commenced, probably, in the last year
+of Vespasian's reign, and completed only in that of
+Domitian&mdash;Cicero as a poet is spoken of with a severity of
+censure which the writer presumes to have been his recognized
+desert. "For C&aelig;sar," he says, "and Brutus made verses, and
+sent them to the public libraries; not better, indeed, than Cicero,
+but with less of general misfortune, because only a few people knew
+that they had done so." This must be taken for what it is worth.
+The treatise, let it have been written by whom it might, is full of
+wit, and is charming in language and feeling. It is a dialogue
+after the manner of Cicero himself, and is the work of an author
+well conversant with the subjects in hand. But it is, no doubt, the
+case that those two unfortunate lines which have been quoted became
+notorious in Rome when there was a party anxious to put down
+Cicero.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_340" id="Page_340">
+340</a></span></p>
+
+<h3><a name="APPENDIX_B" id="APPENDIX_B"></a>APPENDIX B.</h3>
+
+<h5>(<i>See</i> ch. IV., note [84])</h5>
+
+<h4><i>FROM THE BRUTUS&mdash;CA. XCII., XCIII.</i></h4>
+
+<p>"There were at that time two orators, Cotta and Hortensius, who
+towered above all others, and incited me to rival them. The first
+spoke with self-restraint and moderation, clearly and easily,
+expressing his ideas in appropriate language. The other was
+magnificent and fierce; not such as you remember him, Brutus, when
+he was already failing, but full of life both in his words and
+actions. I then resolved that Hortensius should, of the two, be my
+model, because I felt myself like to him in his energy, and nearer
+to him in his age. I observed that when they were in the same
+causes, those for Canuleius and for our consular Dolabella, though
+Cotta was the senior counsel, Hortensius took the lead. A large
+gathering of men and the noise of the Forum require that a speaker
+shall be quick, on fire, active, and loud. The year after my return
+from Asia I undertook the charge of causes that were honorable, and
+in that year I was seeking to be Qu&aelig;stor, Cotta to be Consul, and
+Hortensius to be Pr&aelig;tor. Then for a year I served as Qu&aelig;stor in
+Sicily. Cotta, after his Consulship, went as governor into Gaul,
+and then Hortensius was, and was considered to be, first at the
+bar. When I had been back from Sicily twelve months I began to find
+that whatever there was within me had come to such perfection as it
+might attain. I feel that I am speaking too much of myself, but it
+is done, not that you may be made to own my ability or my
+eloquence&mdash;which is far from my thoughts&mdash;but that you
+may see how great was my toil and my industry. Then, when I had
+been employed for nearly five years in many cases, and was
+accounted a leading advocate, I specially concerned myself in
+conducting the great cause on behalf of Sicily&mdash;the trial of
+Verres&mdash;when I and Hortensius were &AElig;dile and Consul
+designate.</p>
+
+<p>"But as this discussion of ours is intended to produce not a
+mere catalogue of orators, but some true lessons of oratory, let us
+see what there was in Hortensius that we must blame. When he was
+out of his Consulship, seeing that among past Consuls there was no
+one on a par with him, and thinking but little of those who were
+below consular rank, he became idle in his work to which from
+boyhood he had devoted himself, and chose to live in the midst of
+his wealth, as he thought a happier life&mdash;certainly <span
+class='pagenum'><a name="Page_341" id="Page_341">
+341</a></span>an easier one. The first two or three years took off
+something from him. As the gradual decay of a picture will be
+observed by the true critic, though it be not seen by the world at
+large, so was it with his decay. From day to day he became more and
+more unlike his old self, failing in all branches of oratory, but
+specially in the rapidity and continuity of his words. But for
+myself I never rested, struggling always to increase whatever power
+there was in me by practice of every kind, especially in writing.
+Passing over many things in the year after I was &AElig;dile, I will
+come to that in which I was elected first Pr&aelig;tor, to the great
+delight of the public generally; for I had gained the good-will of
+men, partly by my attention to the causes which I undertook, but
+specially by a certain new strain of eloquence, as excellent as it
+was uncommon, with which I spoke." Cicero, when he wrote this of
+himself, was an old man sixty-two years of age, broken hearted for
+the loss of his daughter, to whom it was no doubt allowed among his
+friends to praise himself with the garrulity of years, because it
+was understood that he had been unequalled in the matter of which
+he was speaking. It is easy for us to laugh at his boastings; but
+the account which he gives of his early life, and of the manner in
+which he attained the excellence for which he had been celebrated,
+is of value.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_342" id="Page_342">
+342</a></span></p>
+
+<h3><a name="APPENDIX_C" id="APPENDIX_C"></a>APPENDIX C.</h3>
+
+<h5>(<i>See</i> ch. VI., note [117])</h5>
+
+<p>There was still prevailing in Rome at this time a strong feeling
+that a growing taste for these ornamental luxuries was injurious to
+the Republic, undermining its simplicity and weakening its
+stability. We are well aware that its simplicity was a thing of the
+past, and its stability gone The existence of a Verres is proof
+that it was so; but still the feeling remained&mdash;and did remain
+long after the time of Cicero&mdash;that these beautiful things
+were a sign of decay. We know how conquering Rome caught the taste
+for them from conquered Greece. "Gr&aelig;cia capta ferum victorem
+cepit, et artes intulit agresti Latio." <a name="FNanchor_1_285"
+id="FNanchor_1_285"></a><a href="#Footnote_1_285" class=
+"fnanchor">286</a> Cicero submitted himself to this new captivity
+readily, but with apologies, as shown in his pretended abnegation
+of all knowledge of art. Two years afterward, in a letter to
+Atticus, giving him instructions as to the purchase of statues, he
+declares that he is altogether carried away by his longing for such
+things, but not without a feeling of shame. "Nam in eo genere sic
+studio efferimur ut abs te adjuvandi, ab aliis propre reprehendi
+simus"<a name="FNanchor_2_286" id="FNanchor_2_286"></a><a href=
+"#Footnote_2_286" class="fnanchor">287</a>&mdash;"Though you will
+help me, others I know will blame me." The same feeling is
+expressed beautifully, but no doubt falsely, by Horace when he
+declares, as Cicero had done, his own indifference to such
+delicacies:</p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+<div class="stanza"><span class="i0">"Gems, marbles, ivory, Tuscan
+statuettes,</span> <span class="i0">Pictures, gold plate, G&aelig;tulian
+coverlets,</span> <span class="i0">There are who have not. One
+there is, I trow,</span> <span class="i0">Who cares not greatly if
+he has or no."<a name="FNanchor_3_287" id="FNanchor_3_287"></a><a
+href="#Footnote_3_287" class="fnanchor">288</a></span></div>
+</div>
+
+<p>Many years afterward, in the time of Tiberius, Velleius
+Paterculus says the same when he is telling how ignorant Mummius
+was of sculpture, who, when he had taken Corinth, threatened those
+who had to carry away the statues from their places, that if they
+broke any they should be made to replace them. "You will not doubt,
+however," the historian says, "that it would have been better for
+the Republic to remain ignorant of these Corinthian gems than to
+understand them as well as it does now. <span class='pagenum'><a
+name="Page_343" id="Page_343">343</a></span>That rudeness
+befitted the public honor better than our present taste."<a name=
+"FNanchor_4_288" id="FNanchor_4_288"></a><a href="#Footnote_4_288"
+class="fnanchor">289</a> Cicero understood well enough, with one
+side of his intelligence, that as the longing for these things grew
+in the minds of rich men, as the leading Romans of the day became
+devoted to luxury rather than to work, the ground on which the
+Republic stood must be sapped. A Marcellus or a Scipio had taken
+glory in ornamenting the city. A Verres or even an
+Hortensius&mdash;even a Cicero&mdash;was desirous of beautiful
+things for his own house. But still, with the other side of his
+intelligence, he saw that a perfect citizen might appreciate art,
+and yet do his duty, might appreciate art, and yet save his
+country. What he did not see was, that the temptations of luxury,
+though compatible with virtue, are antagonistic to it. The camel
+may be made to go through the eye of the needle&mdash;but it is
+difficult.</p>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_344" id="Page_344">
+344</a></span></p>
+
+<h3><a name="APPENDIX_D" id="APPENDIX_D"></a>APPENDIX D.</h3>
+
+<h5>(<i>See</i> ch. VII., note [144])</h5>
+
+<h4><i>PRO LEGE MANILIA&mdash;CA. X., XVI.</i></h4>
+
+<table width="100%" summary="poetry" cellpadding="10" border="0">
+<tr>
+<td class="left_50">"Utinam, Quirites, virorum fortium, atque
+innocentium copiam tantam haberetis, ut h&aelig;c vobis deliberatio
+difficilis esset, quemnam potissimum tantis rebus ac tanto bello
+pr&aelig;ficiendum putaretis! Nunc vero cum sit unus Cn. Pompeius, qui
+non modo eorum hominum, qui nunc sunt, gloriam, sed etiam
+antiquitatis memoriam virtute superarit; qu&aelig; res est, qu&aelig;
+cujusquam animum in hac causa dubium facere posset? Ego enim sic
+existimo, in summo imperatore quatuor has res inesse oportere,
+scientiam rei militaris, virtutem, auctoritatem, felicitatem. Quis
+igitur hoc homine scientior umquam aut fuit, aut esse debuit? qui e
+ludo, atque pueriti&aelig; disciplina, bello maximo atque acerrimis
+hostibus, ad patris exercitum atque in militi&aelig; disciplinam
+profectus est? qui extrema pueritia miles fuit summi imperatoris?
+ineunte adolescentia maximi ipse exercitus imperator? qui s&aelig;pius
+cum hoste conflixit, quam quisquam cum inimico concertavit? plura
+bella gessit, quam c&aelig;teri legerunt? plures provincias confecit,
+quam alii concupiverunt? cujus adolescentia ad scientiam rei
+militaris non alienis pr&aelig;ceptis, sed suis imperiis; non <span
+class='pagenum'><a name="Page_345" id="Page_345">
+345</a></span>offensionibus belli, sed victoriis; non stipendiis,
+sed triumphis est erudita? Quod denique genus belli esse potest, in
+quo illum non exercuerit fortuna reipublic&aelig;? Civile; Africanum;
+Transalpinum; Hispaniense; mistum ex civitatibus atque ex
+bellicosissimis nationibus servile; navale bellum, varia et diversa
+genera, et bellorum et hostium, non solum gesta ab hoc uno, sed
+etiam confecta, nullam rem esse declarant, in usu militari positam,
+qu&aelig; hojus viri scientiam fugere posset.</td>
+<td class="left_50">"I could wish, Quirites, that there was open to
+you so large a choice of men capable at the same time, and honest,
+that you might find a difficulty in deciding who might best be
+selected for command in a war so momentous as this. But now when
+Pompey alone has surpassed in achievements not only those who live,
+but all of whom we have read in history, what is there to make any
+one hesitate in the matter? In my opinion there are four qualities
+to be desired in a general&mdash;military knowledge, valor,
+authority, and fortune. But whoever was or was ever wanted to be
+more skilled than this man, who, taken fresh from school and from
+the lessons of his boyhood, was subjected to the discipline of his
+father's army during one of our severest wars, when our enemies
+were strong against us? In his earliest youth he served under our
+greatest general. As years went on he was himself in command over a
+large army. He has been more frequent in fighting than others in
+quarrelling. Few have read of so many battles as he has fought. He
+has conquered more provinces than others have desired to pillage.
+He learned the art of war not from written precepts, but by his own
+practice; not from reverses, but from victories. He does not count
+his campaigns, but the triumphs which he has won. What nature of
+warfare is there in which the Republic has not used his services?
+Think of our Civil war<a name="FNanchor_1_289" id=
+"FNanchor_1_289"></a><a href="#Footnote_1_289" class=
+"fnanchor">290</a>&mdash;of our African war<a name="FNanchor_2_290"
+id="FNanchor_2_290"></a><a href="#Footnote_2_290" class=
+"fnanchor">291</a>&mdash;of our war on the other side of the Alps<a
+name="FNanchor_3_291" id="FNanchor_3_291"></a><a href=
+"#Footnote_3_291" class="fnanchor">292</a>&mdash;of our Spanish
+wars<a name="FNanchor_4_292" id="FNanchor_4_292"></a><a href=
+"#Footnote_4_292" class="fnanchor">293</a>&mdash;of our Servile
+war<a name="FNanchor_5_293" id="FNanchor_5_293"></a><a href=
+"#Footnote_5_293" class="fnanchor">294</a>&mdash;which was carried
+on by the energies of so many mighty people&mdash;and this Maritime
+war.<a name="FNanchor_6_294" id="FNanchor_6_294"></a><a href=
+"#Footnote_6_294" class="fnanchor">295</a> How many enemies had we,
+how various were our contests! They were all not only carried
+through by this one man, but brought to an end so gloriously as to
+show that there is nothing in the practice of warfare which has
+escaped his knowledge.</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="left_50">"Quare cum et bellum ita necessarium sit, ut
+negligi non possit; ita magnum, ut accuratissime sit
+administrandum; et cum ei imperatorem pr&aelig;ficere possitis, in quo
+sit eximia belli scientia, singularis virtus, clarissima
+auctoritas, egregia fortuna; dubitabitis, Quirites, quin hoc tantum
+boni, quod vobis a diis immortalibus oblatum et datum est, in
+rempublicam conservandam atque amplificandam conferatis?"</td>
+<td class="left_50">"Seeing, therefore, that this war cannot be
+neglected; that its importance demands the utmost care in its
+administration; that it requires a general in whom should be found
+sure military science, manifest valor, conspicuous authority, and
+pre-eminent good fortune&mdash;do you doubt, Quirites, but that you
+should use the great blessing which the gods have given you for the
+preservation and glory of the Republic?"</td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+<p>On reading, however, the piece over again, I almost doubt
+whether there be any passages in it which should be selected as
+superior to others.</p>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_346" id="Page_346">
+346</a></span></p>
+
+<h3><a name="APPENDIX_E" id="APPENDIX_E"></a>APPENDIX E.</h3>
+
+<h5>(<i>See</i> ch. XI., note [235])</h5>
+
+<h4><i>LUCAN, LIBER I.</i></h4>
+
+<table width="100%" summary="poetry" cellpadding="5" border="0">
+<tr>
+<td class="left_50">
+<div class="poem2">
+<div class="stanza"><span class="i0">"<span class="smcap">O
+male</span> concordes, nimiaque cupidine c&aelig;ci,</span> <span
+class="i0">Quid miscere juvat vires orbemque tenere</span> <span
+class="i0">In medio."</span></div>
+</div>
+</td>
+<td class="left_50">"O men so ill-fitted to agree, O men blind with
+greed, of what service can it be that you should join your powers,
+and possess the world between you?"</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="left_50">
+<div class="poem2">
+<div class="stanza"><span class="i0">"Temporis angusti mansit
+concordia discors,</span> <span class="i0">Paxque fuit non sponte
+ducum. Nam sola futuri</span> <span class="i0">Crassus erat belli
+medius mora. Qualiter undas</span> <span class="i0">Qui secat, et
+geminum gracilis mare separat isthmos,</span> <span class="i0">Nec
+patitur conferre fretum; si terra recedat,</span> <span class=
+"i0">Ionium &AElig;g&aelig;o frangat mare. Sic, ubi s&aelig;va</span> <span class=
+"i0">Arma ducum dirimens, miserando funere Crassus</span> <span
+class="i0">Assyrias latio maculavit sanguine Carras."</span></div>
+</div>
+</td>
+<td class="left_50">"For a short time the ill-sorted compact
+lasted, and there was a peace which each of them abhorred. Crassus
+alone stood between the others, hindering for a while the coming
+war&mdash;as an isthmus separates two waters and forbids sea to
+meet sea. If the morsel of land gives way, the Ionian waves and the
+&AElig;gean dash themselves in foam against each other. So was it with
+the arms of the two chiefs when Crassus fell, and drenched the
+Assyrian Carr&aelig; with Roman blood."</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="left_50">
+<div class="poem2">
+<div class="stanza"><span class="i0">"Dividitur ferro regnum;
+populique potentis,</span> <span class="i0">Qu&aelig; mare, qu&aelig; terras,
+qu&aelig; totum possidet orbem,</span> <span class="i0">Non cepit
+fortuna duos."</span></div>
+</div>
+</td>
+<td class="left_50">"Then the possession of the Empire was put to
+the arbitration of the sword. The fortunes of a people which
+possessed sea and earth and the whole world, were not sufficient
+for two men."</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="left_50">
+<div class="poem2">
+<div class="stanza"><span class="i0">"Tu nova ne veteres obscurent
+acta triumphos,</span> <span class="i0">Et victis cedat piratica
+laurea Gallis,</span> <span class="i0">Magne, times; te jam series,
+ususque laborum</span> <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_347" id=
+"Page_347">347</a></span> <span class="i0">Erigit,
+impatiensque loci fortuna secundi.</span> <span class="i0">Nec
+quemquam jam ferre potest C&aelig;sarve priorem,</span>
+<span class="i0">Pompeiusve parem. Quis justius induit arma,</span>
+<span class="i0">Scire nefas; magno se judice quisque
+tuetur,</span> <span class="i0">Victrix causa deis placuit sed
+victa, Catoni.<a name="FNanchor_1_295" id="FNanchor_1_295"></a><a
+href="#Footnote_1_295" class="fnanchor">296</a></span></div>
+</div>
+</td>
+<td class="left_50">"You, Magnus, you, Pompeius, fear lest newer
+deeds than yours should make dull your old triumphs, and the
+scattering of the pirates should be as nothing to the conquering of
+Gaul. The practice of many wars has so exalted you, O C&aelig;sar,
+that you cannot put up with a second place. C&aelig;sar will endure
+no superior; but Pompey will have no equal. Whose cause was the
+better the poet dares not inquire! Each will have his own advocate
+in history. On the side of the conqueror the gods ranged
+themselves. Cato has chosen to follow the conquered.</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="left_50">
+<div class="poem2">
+<div class="stanza"><span class="i0">Nec coiere pares; alter
+vergentibus annis</span> <span class="i0">In senium, longoque tog&aelig;
+tranquillior usu</span> <span class="i0">Dedidicit jam pace ducem;
+fam&aelig;que petitor</span> <span class="i0">Multa dare in vulgas; totus
+popularibus auris</span> <span class="i0">Impelli, plausuque sui
+gaudere theatri;</span> <span class="i0">Nec reparare novas vires,
+multumque priori</span> <span class="i0">Credere fortun&aelig;. Stat
+magni nominis umbra."</span></div>
+</div>
+</td>
+<td class="left_50">"But surely the men were not equal. The one in
+declining years, who had already changed his arms for the garb of
+peace, had unlearned the general in the statesman&mdash;had become
+wont to talk to the people, to devote himself to harangues, and to
+love the applause of his own theatre. He has not cared to renew his
+strength, trusting to his old fortune. There remains of him but the
+shadow of his great name."</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="left_50">
+<div class="poem2">
+<div class="stanza"><span class="i4">"Sed non in C&aelig;sare
+tantum</span> <span class="i0">Nomen erat, nec fama ducis; sed
+nescia virtus</span> <span class="i0">Stare loco; solusque pudor
+non vincere bello.</span> <span class="i0">Acer et indomitus; quo
+spes, quoque ira vocasset,</span> <span class="i0">Ferre manum, et
+nunquam te merando parcere ferro;</span> <span class="i0">Successus
+urgere suos; instare favori</span> <span class="i0">
+Numinis."&mdash;Lucan,&nbsp;lib. i.</span></div>
+</div>
+</td>
+<td class="left_50">"The name of C&aelig;sar does not loom so
+large; nor is his character as a general so high. But there is a
+spirit which can content itself with no achievements; there is but
+one feeling of shame&mdash;that of not conquering; a man
+determined, not to be controlled, taking his arms wherever lust of
+conquest or anger may call him; a man never sparing the sword,
+creating all things from his own good-fortune trusting always the
+favors of the gods."</td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+
+<h4>NOTES:</h4>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_1_1" id="Footnote_1_1"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor_1_1"><span class="label">1</span></a> Froude's
+C&aelig;sar, p.444.</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_2_2" id="Footnote_2_2"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor_2_2"><span class="label">2</span></a> Ibid.,
+p.428.</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_3_3" id="Footnote_3_3"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor_3_3"><span class="label">3</span></a> Ad Att.,
+lib. xiii., 28.</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_4_4" id="Footnote_4_4"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor_4_4"><span class="label">4</span></a> Ad Att.,
+lib. ix., 10.</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_5_5" id="Footnote_5_5"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor_5_5"><span class="label">5</span></a> Froude,
+p.365.</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_6_6" id="Footnote_6_6"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor_6_6"><span class="label">6</span></a> Ad Att.,
+lib. ii., 5: "Quo quidem uno ego ab istis capi possum."</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_7_7" id="Footnote_7_7"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor_7_7"><span class="label">7</span></a> The Cincian law,
+of which I shall have to speak again, forbade Roman advocates to
+take any payment for their services. Cicero expressly declares that
+he has always obeyed that law. He accused others of disobeying it,
+as, for instance, Hortensius. But no contemporary has accused him.
+Mr. Collins refers to some books which had been given to Cicero by
+his friend P&oelig;tus. They are mentioned in a letter to Atticus, lib.
+i., 20; and Cicero, joking, says that he has consulted
+Cincius&mdash;perhaps some descendant of him who made the law 145
+years before&mdash;as to the legality of accepting the present. But
+we have no reason for supposing that he had ever acted as an
+advocate for P&oelig;tus.</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_8_8" id="Footnote_8_8"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor_8_8"><span class="label">8</span></a> Virgil, &AElig;neid,
+i., 150:</p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+<div class="stanza"><span class="i05">"Ac, veluti magno in populo
+quum s&aelig;pe coorta est</span> <span class="i0">Seditio, s&aelig;vitque
+animis ignobile vulgus;</span> <span class="i0">Jamque faces, et
+saxa volant; furor arma ministrat:</span> <span class="i0">Tum,
+pietate gravem ac meritis si forte virum quem</span> <span class=
+"i0">Conspexere, silent, arrectisque auribus adstant;</span> <span
+class="i0">Iste regit dictis animos, et pectora
+mulcet."</span></div>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_9_9" id="Footnote_9_9"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor_9_9"><span class="label">9</span></a> The author is
+saying that a history from Cicero would have been invaluable, and
+the words are "interitu ejus utrum respublica an historia magis
+doleat."</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_10_10" id="Footnote_10_10"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor_10_10"><span class="label">10</span></a> Quintilian
+tells us this, lib. ii., c. 5. The passage of Livy is not extant.
+The commentators suppose it to have been taken from a letter to his
+son.</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_11_11" id="Footnote_11_11"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor_11_11"><span class="label">11</span></a> Velleius
+Paterculus, lib. ii., c. 34.</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_12_12" id="Footnote_12_12"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor_12_12"><span class="label">12</span></a> Valerius
+Maximus, lib. iv., c. 2; 4.</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_13_13" id="Footnote_13_13"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor_13_13"><span class="label">13</span></a> Pliny, Hist.
+Nat., lib. vii., xxxi., 30.</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_14_14" id="Footnote_14_14"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor_14_14"><span class="label">14</span></a> Martial, lib.
+xiv., 188.</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_15_15" id="Footnote_15_15"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor_15_15"><span class="label">15</span></a> Lucan,
+lib. vii., 62:</p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+<div class="stanza"><span class="i05">"Cunctorum voces Romani
+maximus auctor</span> <span class="i0">Tullius eloquii, cujus sub
+jure togaque</span> <span class="i0">Pacificas s&aelig;vus tremuit
+Catilina secures,</span> <span class="i0">Pertulit iratus bellis,
+cum rostra forumque</span> <span class="i0">Optaret passus tam
+longa silentia miles</span> <span class="i0">Addidit invalid&aelig;
+robur facundia caus&aelig;."</span></div>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_16_16" id="Footnote_16_16"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor_16_16"><span class="label">16</span></a> Tacitus, De
+Oratoribus, xxx.</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_17_17" id="Footnote_17_17"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor_17_17"><span class="label">17</span></a> Juvenal,
+viii., 243.</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_18_18" id="Footnote_18_18"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor_18_18"><span class="label">18</span></a> Demosthenes
+and Cicero compared.</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_19_19" id="Footnote_19_19"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor_19_19"><span class="label">19</span></a> Quintilian,
+xii., 1.</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_20_20" id="Footnote_20_20"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor_20_20"><span class="label">20</span></a> "Repudiatus
+vigintiviratus." He refused a position of official value rendered
+vacant by the death of one Cosconius. See Letters to Atticus,
+2,19.</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_21_21" id="Footnote_21_21"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor_21_21"><span class="label">21</span></a> Florus,
+lib. iv., 1. In a letter from Essex to Foulke Greville, the writing
+of which has been attributed to Bacon by Mr. Spedding, Florus is
+said simply to have epitomized Livy (Life, vol. ii., p.23). In this
+I think that Bacon has shorn him of his honors.</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_22_22" id="Footnote_22_22"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor_22_22"><span class="label">22</span></a> Florus,
+lib. iv., 1.</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_23_23" id="Footnote_23_23"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor_23_23"><span class="label">23</span></a> Sallust,
+Catilinaria, xxiii.</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_24_24" id="Footnote_24_24"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor_24_24"><span class="label">24</span></a> I will add
+the concluding passage from the pseudo declamation, in order that
+the reader may see the nature of the words which were put into
+Sallust's mouth: "Quos tyrannos appellabas, eorum nunc potenti&aelig;
+faves; qui tibi ante optumates videbantur, eosdem nunc dementes ac
+furiosos vocas; Vatinii caussam agis, de Sextio male existumas;
+Bibulum petulantissumis verbis l&aelig;dis, laudas C&aelig;sarem; quem
+maxume odisti, ei maxume obsequeris. Aliud stans, aliud sedens, de
+republica sentis; his maledicis, illos odisti; levissume transfuga,
+neque in hac, neque illa parte fidem habes." Hence Dio Cassius
+declared that Cicero had been called a turncoat. &#954;&#945;&#8054; &#945;&#8016;&#964;&#8057;&#956;&#945;&#955;&#959;&#962; &#8032;&#957;&#959;&#956;&#8049;&#950;&#949;&#964;&#959;.</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_25_25" id="Footnote_25_25"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor_25_25"><span class="label">25</span></a> Dio Cassius,
+lib. xlvi., 18: &#960;&#961;&#8056;&#962; &#7971;&#957; &#954;&#945;&#8054; &#945;&#8016;&#964;&#8052;&#957; &#964;&#959;&#953;&#945;&#8059;&#964;&#945;&#962; &#7952;&#960;&#943;&#963;&#964;&#959;&#955;&#945;&#962;
+&#947;&#961;&#945;&#966;&#949;&#8054;&#962; &#959;&#7989;&#945;&#962; &#7938;&#957; &#947;&#961;&#8049;&#968;&#949;&#953;&#949;&#957; &#7936;&#957;&#8052;&#961; &#963;&#954;&#969;&#960;&#964;&#8057;&#955;&#951;&#962; &#7936;&#952;&#965;&#961;&#8057;&#947;&#955;&#969;&#961;&#961;&#959;&#962; ... &#954;&#945;&#8054;
+&#960;&#961;&#959;&#963;&#8051;&#964;&#953; &#954;&#945;&#8054; &#964;&#8056; &#963;&#964;&#8057;&#956;&#945; &#945;&#8016;&#964;&#959;&#8166; &#948;&#953;&#945;&#946;&#8049;&#955;&#955;&#949;&#953;&#957; &#7952;&#960;&#949;&#967;&#949;&#943;&#961;&#951;&#963;&#949; &#964;&#959;&#963;&#945;&#8059;&#964;&#951;
+&#7936;&#963;&#949;&#955;&#947;&#949;&#8055;&#945; &#954;&#945;&#8054; &#7936;&#954;&#945;&#952;&#945;&#961;&#963;&#943;&#945; &#960;&#945;&#961;&#8048; &#960;&#8049;&#957;&#964;&#945; &#964;&#8056;&#957; &#946;&#953;&#8056;&#957; &#967;&#961;&#8061;&#956;&#949;&#957;&#959;&#962; &#8037;&#963;&#964;&#949; &#956;&#951;&#948;&#8050;
+&#964;&#8182;&#957; &#963;&#965;&#947;&#947;&#949;&#957;&#949;&#963;&#964;&#8049;&#964;&#969;&#957; &#7936;&#960;&#8051;&#967;&#949;&#963;&#952;&#945;&#953;, &#7936;&#955;&#955;&#8048; &#964;&#8053;&#957; &#964;&#949; &#947;&#965;&#957;&#945;&#8150;&#954;&#945; &#960;&#961;&#959;&#945;&#947;&#969;&#947;&#949;&#8059;&#949;&#953;&#957;
+&#954;&#945;&#8054; &#964;&#8052;&#957; &#952;&#965;&#947;&#945;&#964;&#8051;&#961;&#945; &#956;&#959;&#953;&#967;&#949;&#8059;&#949;&#953;&#957;.</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_26_26" id="Footnote_26_26"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor_26_26"><span class="label">26</span></a> As it
+happens, De Quincey specially calls Cicero a man of conscience.
+"Cicero is one of the very few pagan statesmen who can be described
+as a thoroughly conscientious man," he says. The purport of his
+illogical essay on Cicero is no doubt thoroughly hostile to the
+man. It is chiefly worth reading on account of the amusing
+virulence with which Middleton, the biographer, is attacked.</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_27_27" id="Footnote_27_27"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor_27_27"><span class="label">27</span></a> Quintilian,
+lib. ii., c. 5.</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_28_28" id="Footnote_28_28"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor_28_28"><span class="label">28</span></a> De Finibus,
+lib. v., ca. xxii.: "Nemo est igitur, qui non hanc affectionem animi
+probet atque laudet."</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_29_29" id="Footnote_29_29"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor_29_29"><span class="label">29</span></a> De Rep.,
+lib. vi., ca. vii.: "Nihil est enim illi principi deo, qui omnem hunc
+mundum regit, quod quidem in terris fiat acceptius." Tusc. Quest.,
+lib. i., ca. xxx.: "Vetat enim dominans ille in nobis deus."</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_30_30" id="Footnote_30_30"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor_30_30"><span class="label">30</span></a> De Rep.,
+lib. vi., ca. vii.: "Certum esse in c&oelig;lo definitum locum, ubi beati
+&aelig;vo sempiterno fruantur."</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_31_31" id="Footnote_31_31"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor_31_31"><span class="label">31</span></a> Hor., lib. i.,
+Ode xxii.,</p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+<div class="stanza"><span class="i05">"Non rura qua; Liris
+quieta</span> <span class="i0">Mordet aqua taciturnus
+amnis."</span></div>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_32_32" id="Footnote_32_32"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor_32_32"><span class="label">32</span></a> Such was the
+presumed condition of things at Rome. By the passing of a special
+law a plebeian might, and occasionally did, become patrician. The
+patricians had so nearly died out in the time of Julius C&aelig;sar
+that he introduced fifty new families by the Lex Cassia.</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_33_33" id="Footnote_33_33"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor_33_33"><span class="label">33</span></a> De Orat.,
+lib. ii., ca. 1.</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_34_34" id="Footnote_34_34"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor_34_34"><span class="label">34</span></a> Brutus,
+ca. lxxxix.</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_35_35" id="Footnote_35_35"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor_35_35"><span class="label">35</span></a> It should be
+remembered that in Latin literature it was the recognized practice
+of authors to borrow wholesale from the Greek, and that no charge
+of plagiarism attended such borrowing. Virgil, in taking thoughts
+and language from Homer, was simply supposed to have shown his
+judgment in accommodating Greek delights to Roman ears and Roman
+intellects.</p>
+
+<p>The idea as to literary larceny is of later date, and has grown
+up with personal claims for originality and with copyright.
+Shakspeare did not acknowledge whence he took his plots, because it
+was unnecessary. Now, if a writer borrow a tale from the French, it
+is held that he ought at least to owe the obligation, or perhaps
+even pay for it.</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_36_36" id="Footnote_36_36"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor_36_36"><span class="label">36</span></a> Juvenal,
+Sat. x., 122,</p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+<div class="stanza"><span class="i05">"O fortunatam natam me Consule
+Romam!</span> <span class="i0">Antoni gladios potuit contemnere, si
+sic</span> <span class="i0">Omnia dixisset."</span></div>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_37_37" id="Footnote_37_37"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor_37_37"><span class="label">37</span></a> De Leg.,
+lib. i., ca. 1.</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_38_38" id="Footnote_38_38"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor_38_38"><span class="label">38</span></a> Life and
+Times of Henry Lord Brougham, written by himself, vol. i., p.
+58.</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_39_39" id="Footnote_39_39"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor_39_39"><span class="label">39</span></a> I give the
+nine versions to which I allude in an Appendix A, at the end of
+this volume, so that those curious in such matters may compare the
+words in which the same picture has been drawn by various
+hands.</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_40_40" id="Footnote_40_40"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor_40_40"><span class="label">40</span></a> Pro Archia,
+ca. vii.</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_41_41" id="Footnote_41_41"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor_41_41"><span class="label">41</span></a> Brutus,
+ca. xc.</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_42_42" id="Footnote_42_42"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor_42_42"><span class="label">42</span></a> Tacitus, De
+Oratoribus, xxx.</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_43_43" id="Footnote_43_43"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor_43_43"><span class="label">43</span></a> Quintilian,
+lib. xii., c. vi., who wrote about the same time as this essayist,
+tells us of these three instances of early oratory, not, however,
+specifying the exact age in either case. He also reminds us that
+Demosthenes pleaded when he was a boy, and that Augustus at the age
+of twelve made a public harangue in honor of his grandmother.</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_44_44" id="Footnote_44_44"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor_44_44"><span class="label">44</span></a> Brutus,
+ca. xc.</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_45_45" id="Footnote_45_45"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor_45_45"><span class="label">45</span></a> Brutus,
+xci.</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_46_46" id="Footnote_46_46"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor_46_46"><span class="label">46</span></a> Quintilian,
+lib. xii., vi.: "Quum jam clarum meruisset inter patronos, qui tum
+erant, nomen, in Asiam navigavit, seque et aliis sine dubio
+eloquenti&aelig; ac sapienti&aelig; magistris, sed pr&aelig;cipue tamen Apollonio
+Moloni, quem Rom&aelig; quoque audierat, Rhodi rursus formandum ac velut
+recognendum dedit."</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_47_47" id="Footnote_47_47"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor_47_47"><span class="label">47</span></a> Brutus,
+xci.</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_48_48" id="Footnote_48_48"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor_48_48"><span class="label">48</span></a> The total
+correspondence contains 817 letters, of which 52 were written to
+Cicero, 396 were written by Cicero to Atticus, and 369 by Cicero to
+his friends in general. We have no letters from Atticus to
+Cicero.</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_49_49" id="Footnote_49_49"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor_49_49"><span class="label">49</span></a> Quintilian,
+lib. x., ca. 1.</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_50_50" id="Footnote_50_50"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor_50_50"><span class="label">50</span></a> Clemens of
+Alexandria, in his exhortation to the Gentiles, is very severe upon
+the iniquities of these rites. "All evil be to him," he says, "who
+brought them into fashion, whether it was Dardanus, or Eetion the
+Thracian, or Midas the Phrygian." The old story which he repeats as
+to Ceres and Proserpine may have been true, but he was altogether
+ignorant of the changes which the common-sense of centuries had
+produced.</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_51_51" id="Footnote_51_51"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor_51_51"><span class="label">51</span></a> De Legibus,
+lib. ii., c. xiv.</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_52_52" id="Footnote_52_52"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor_52_52"><span class="label">52</span></a> It was then
+that the foreign empire commenced, in ruling which the simplicity
+and truth of purpose and patriotism of the Republic were lost.</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_53_53" id="Footnote_53_53"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor_53_53"><span class="label">53</span></a> The reverses
+of fortune to which Marius was subjected, how he was buried up to
+his neck in the mud, hiding in the marshes of Minturn&aelig;, how he
+would have been killed by the traitorous magistrates of that city
+but that he quelled the executioners by the fire of his eyes; how
+he sat and glowered, a houseless exile, among the ruins of
+Carthage&mdash;all which things happened to him while he was
+running from the partisans of Sulla&mdash;are among the picturesque
+episodes of history. There is a tragedy called the <i>Wounds of
+Civil War</i>, written by Lodge, who was born some eight years
+before Shakspeare, in which the story of Marius is told with some
+exquisite poetry, but also with some ludicrous additions. The Gaul
+who is hired to kill Marius, but is frightened by his eyes, talks
+bad French mingled with bad English, and calls on Jesus in his
+horror!</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_54_54" id="Footnote_54_54"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor_54_54"><span class="label">54</span></a> Brutus,
+ca. xc.</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_55_55" id="Footnote_55_55"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor_55_55"><span class="label">55</span></a> Florus tells
+us that there were 2000 Senators and Knights, but that any one was
+allowed to kill just whom he would. "Quis autem illos potest
+computare quos in urbe passim quisquis voluit occidit" (lib. iii.,
+ca. 21).</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_56_56" id="Footnote_56_56"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor_56_56"><span class="label">56</span></a> About
+&pound;487 10<i>s.</i> In Smith's Dictionary of Greek and Roman
+Antiquities the Attic talent is given as being worth &pound;243
+15<i>s.</i> Mommsen quotes the price as 12,000 denarii, which would amount
+to about the same sum.</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_57_57" id="Footnote_57_57"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor_57_57"><span class="label">57</span></a> Suetonius
+speaks of his death. Florus mentions the proscriptions and
+abdication. Velleius Paterculus is eloquent in describing the
+horrors of the massacres and confiscation. Dio Cassius refers again
+and again to the Sullan cruelty. But none of them give a reason for
+the abdication of Sulla.</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_58_58" id="Footnote_58_58"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor_58_58"><span class="label">58</span></a> Vol. iii.,
+p.386. I quote from Mr. Dickson's translation, as I do not read
+German.</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_59_59" id="Footnote_59_59"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor_59_59"><span class="label">59</span></a> In defending
+Roscius Amerinus, while Sulla was still in power, he speaks of the
+Sullan massacres as "pugna Cannensis," a slaughter as foul, as
+disgraceful, as bloody as had been the defeat at Cann&aelig;.</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_60_60" id="Footnote_60_60"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor_60_60"><span class="label">60</span></a> Mommsen,
+vol. iii., p. 385.</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_61_61" id="Footnote_61_61"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor_61_61"><span class="label">61</span></a> Pro Sexto
+Roscio, ca. xxi.: "Quod antea causam publicam nullam dixerim." He
+says also in the Brutus, ca. xc., "Itaque prima causa publica, pro
+Sex. Roscio dicta." By "publica causa" he means a criminal
+accusation in distinction from a civil action.</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_62_62" id="Footnote_62_62"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor_62_62"><span class="label">62</span></a> Pro Publio
+Quintio, ca. i.: "Quod mihi consuevit in ceteris causis esse
+adjumento, id quoque in hac causa deficit."</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_63_63" id="Footnote_63_63"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor_63_63"><span class="label">63</span></a> Pro Publio
+Quintio, ca. xxi.: "Nolo eam rem commemorando renovare, cujus omnino
+rei memoriam omnem tolli funditus ac deleri arbitror oportere."</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_64_64" id="Footnote_64_64"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor_64_64"><span class="label">64</span></a> Pro Roscio,
+ca. xlix. Cicero says of him that he would be sure to suppose that
+anything would have been done according to law of which he should
+be told that it was done by Sulla's order. "Putat homo imperitus
+morum, agricola et rusticus, ista omnia, qu&aelig; vos per Sullam gesta
+esse dicitis, more, lege, jure gentium facta."</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_65_65" id="Footnote_65_65"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor_65_65"><span class="label">65</span></a> Pro Sexto
+Roscio, ca. 1.</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_66_66" id="Footnote_66_66"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor_66_66"><span class="label">66</span></a> Pro Sexto
+Roscio, ca. xxix.: "Ejusmodi tempus erat, inquit, ut homines vulgo
+impune occiderentur."</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_67_67" id="Footnote_67_67"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor_67_67"><span class="label">67</span></a> Pro T. A.
+Milone, ca.xxi.: "Cur igitur cos manumisit? Metuebat scilicit ne
+indicarent; ne dolorem perferre non possent."</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_68_68" id="Footnote_68_68"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor_68_68"><span class="label">68</span></a> Pro T. A.
+Milone, ca.xxii.: "Heus tu, Ruscio, verbi gratia, cave sis
+mentiaris. Clodius insidias fecit Miloni? Fecit. Certa crux. Nullas
+fecit. Sperata libertas."</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_69_69" id="Footnote_69_69"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor_69_69"><span class="label">69</span></a> Pro Sexto
+Roscio, ca. xxviii.</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_70_70" id="Footnote_70_70"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor_70_70"><span class="label">70</span></a> Ibid.</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_71_71" id="Footnote_71_71"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor_71_71"><span class="label">71</span></a> Ibid.,
+ca. xxxi.</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_72_72" id="Footnote_72_72"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor_72_72"><span class="label">72</span></a> Pro Sexto
+Roscio, ca. xlv.</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_73_73" id="Footnote_73_73"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor_73_73"><span class="label">73</span></a> Pro Sexto
+Roscio, ca. xlvi. The whole picture of Chrysogonus, of his house, of
+his luxuries, and his vanity, is too long for quotation, but is
+worth referring to by those who wish to see how bold and how
+brilliant Cicero could be.</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_74_74" id="Footnote_74_74"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor_74_74"><span class="label">74</span></a> They put in
+tablets of wax, on which they recorded their judgment by
+inscribing letter, C, A, or NL&mdash;Condemno, Absolvo, or Non
+liquet&mdash;intending to show that the means of coming to a
+decision did not seem to be sufficient.</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_75_75" id="Footnote_75_75"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor_75_75"><span class="label">75</span></a> Quintilian
+tells us, lib. x., ca.vii., that Cicero's speeches as they had come
+to his day had been abridged&mdash;by which he probably means only
+arranged&mdash;by Tiro, his slave and secretary and friend. "Nam
+Ciceronis ad pr&aelig;sens modo tempus aptatos libertus Tiro
+contraxit."</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_76_76" id="Footnote_76_76"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor_76_76"><span class="label">76</span></a> Quintilian,
+lib. xi., ca.iii.: "Nam et toga, et calecus, et capillus, tam nimia
+cura, quam negligentia, sunt reprehendenda." * * * "Sinistrum
+brachium eo usque allevandum est, ut quasi normalem illum angulum
+faciat." Quint., lib. xii., ca.x., "ne hirta toga sit;" don't let
+the toga be rumpled; "non serica:" the silk here interdicted was
+the silk of effeminacy, not that silk of authority of which our
+barristers are proud. "Ne intonsum caput; non in gradus atque
+annulos comptum." It would take too much space were I to give here
+all the lessons taught by this professor of deportment as to the
+wearing of the toga.</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_77_77" id="Footnote_77_77"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor_77_77"><span class="label">77</span></a> A doubt has
+been raised whether he was not married when he went to Greece, as
+otherwise his daughter would seem to have become a wife earlier
+than is probable. The date, however, has been generally given as it
+is stated here.</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_78_78" id="Footnote_78_78"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor_78_78"><span class="label">78</span></a> Tacitus,
+Annal., xi., 5, says, "Qua cavetur antiquitus, ne quis, ob causam
+orandam, pecuniam donumve accipiat."</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_79_79" id="Footnote_79_79"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor_79_79"><span class="label">79</span></a> De Off.,
+lib. i., ca. xlii.: "Sordidi etiam putandi, qui mercantur a
+mercatoribus, quod statim vendant. Nihil enim proficiunt, nisi
+admodum mentiantur."</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_80_80" id="Footnote_80_80"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor_80_80"><span class="label">80</span></a> De Off.,
+lib. i., ca. xlii.: "Primum improbantur ii qu&aelig;stus, qui in odia
+hominum incurrunt: ut portitorum ut f&oelig;neratorum." The Portitores
+were inferior collectors of certain dues, stationed at seaports,
+who are supposed to have been extremely vexatious in their dealings
+with the public.</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_81_81" id="Footnote_81_81"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor_81_81"><span class="label">81</span></a> Philipp.,
+11-16.</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_82_82" id="Footnote_82_82"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor_82_82"><span class="label">82</span></a> Let any who
+doubt this statement refer to the fate of the inhabitants of Alesia
+and Uxellodunum. C&aelig;sar did not slay or torture for the sake
+of cruelty, but was never deterred by humanity when expediency
+seemed to him to require victims. Men and women, old and young,
+many or few, they were sacrificed without remorse if his purpose
+required it.</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_83_83" id="Footnote_83_83"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor_83_83"><span class="label">83</span></a> Pro Pub.
+Quintio, ca. xxv.</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_84_84" id="Footnote_84_84"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor_84_84"><span class="label">84</span></a> See Appendix
+B, Brutus, ca. xcii., xciii.</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_85_85" id="Footnote_85_85"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor_85_85"><span class="label">85</span></a> Brutus, ca.
+xciii.: "Animos hominum ad me dicendi novitate converteram."</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_86_86" id="Footnote_86_86"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor_86_86"><span class="label">86</span></a> It must be
+remembered that this advice was actually given when Cicero
+subsequently became a candidate for the Consulship, but it is
+mentioned here as showing the manner in which were sought the great
+offices of State.</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_87_87" id="Footnote_87_87"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor_87_87"><span class="label">87</span></a> Cicero speaks
+of Sicily as divided into two provinces, "Qu&aelig;stores utriusque
+provinci&aelig;." There was, however, but one Pr&aelig;tor or Proconsul. But
+the island had been taken by the Romans at two different times.
+Lilyb&aelig;um and the west was obtained from the Carthaginians at
+the end of the first Punic war, whereas, Syracuse was conquered by
+Marcellus and occupied during the second Punic war.</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_88_88" id="Footnote_88_88"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor_88_88"><span class="label">88</span></a> Tacitus,
+Ann., lib.xi., ca.xxii.: "Post, lege Sull&aelig;, viginti creati
+supplendo senatui, cui judicia tradiderat."</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_89_89" id="Footnote_89_89"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor_89_89"><span class="label">89</span></a> De Legibus,
+iii., xii.</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_90_90" id="Footnote_90_90"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor_90_90"><span class="label">90</span></a> Pro P. Sexto,
+lxv.</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_91_91" id="Footnote_91_91"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor_91_91"><span class="label">91</span></a> Pro Cluentio,
+lvi.</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_92_92" id="Footnote_92_92"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor_92_92"><span class="label">92</span></a> Contra
+Verrem, Act.iv., ca. xi.: "Ecqu&aelig; civitas est, non modo in
+provinciis nostris, verum etiam in ultimis nationibus, aut tam
+potens, aut tam libera, aut etiam am immanis ac barbara; rex
+denique ecquis est, qui senatorem populi Romani tecto ac domo non
+invitet?"</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_93_93" id="Footnote_93_93"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor_93_93"><span class="label">93</span></a> Contra
+Verrem, Act. i., ca. xiii.: "Omnia non modo commemorabuntur, sed
+etiam, expositis certis rebus, agentur, qu&aelig; inter decem annos,
+posteaquam judicia ad senatum translata sunt, in rebus judicandis
+nefarie flagitioseque facta sunt."</p>
+
+<p>Pro Cluentio, lvi.: "Locus,
+auctoritas, domi splendor, apud exteras nationes nomen et gratia,
+toga pr&aelig;texta, sella curulis, insignia, fasces, exercitus,
+imperia, provincia."</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_94_94" id="Footnote_94_94"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor_94_94"><span class="label">94</span></a> Contra
+Verrem, Act.i., ca. xviii.: "Quadringenties sestertium ex Sicilia
+contra leges abstulisse." In Smith's Dictionary of Grecian and
+Roman Antiquities we are told that a thousand sesterces is equal in
+our money to &pound;8 17<i>s.</i> 1<i>d.</i> Of the estimated amount of this
+plunder we shall have to speak again.</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_95_95" id="Footnote_95_95"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor_95_95"><span class="label">95</span></a> Pro Plancio,
+xxvi.</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_96_96" id="Footnote_96_96"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor_96_96"><span class="label">96</span></a> Pro Plancio,
+xxvi.</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_97_97" id="Footnote_97_97"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor_97_97"><span class="label">97</span></a> M. du Rozoir
+was a French critic, and was joined with M. Gu&eacute;roult and M.
+de Guerle in translating and annotating the Orations of Cicero for
+M. Panckoucke's edition of the Latin classics.</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_98_98" id="Footnote_98_98"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor_98_98"><span class="label">98</span></a> In Verrem
+Actio Secunda, lib. i., vii.</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_99_99" id="Footnote_99_99"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor_99_99"><span class="label">99</span></a> Plutarch says
+that C&aelig;cilius was an emancipated slave, and a Jew, which
+could not have been true, as he was a Roman Senator.</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_100_100" id="Footnote_100_100"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor_100_100"><span class="label">100</span></a> De
+Oratore, lib. ii., c. xlix. The feeling is beautifully expressed in
+the words put into the mouth of Antony in the discussion on the
+charms and attributes of eloquence: "Qui mihi in liberum loco more
+majorum esse deberet."</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_101_101" id="Footnote_101_101"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor_101_101"><span class="label">101</span></a> In Q.
+C&aelig;c. Divinatio, ca. ii.</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_102_102" id="Footnote_102_102"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor_102_102"><span class="label">102</span></a> Divinatio,
+ca. iii.</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_103_103" id="Footnote_103_103"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor_103_103"><span class="label">103</span></a> Ibid.,
+ca. vi.</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_104_104" id="Footnote_104_104"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor_104_104"><span class="label">104</span></a> Ibid.,
+ca. viii.</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_105_105" id="Footnote_105_105"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor_105_105"><span class="label">105</span></a> Divinatio,
+ca. ix.</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_106_106" id="Footnote_106_106"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor_106_106"><span class="label">106</span></a> Ibid.,
+ca. xi.</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_107_107" id="Footnote_107_107"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor_107_107"><span class="label">107</span></a> Ibid.</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_108_108" id="Footnote_108_108"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor_108_108"><span class="label">108</span></a> Ibid.,
+ca. xii.</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_109_109" id="Footnote_109_109"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor_109_109"><span class="label">109</span></a> Actio
+Secunda, lib. ii., xl. He is speaking of Sthenius, and the
+illegality of certain proceedings on the part of Verres against
+him. "If an accused man could be condemned in the absence of the
+accuser, do you think that I would have gone in a little boat from
+Vibo to Velia, among all the dangers prepared for me by your
+fugitive slaves and pirates, when I had to hurry at the peril of my
+life, knowing that you would escape if I were not present to the
+day?"</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_110_110" id="Footnote_110_110"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor_110_110"><span class="label">110</span></a> Actio
+Secunda, l. xxi.</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_111_111" id="Footnote_111_111"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor_111_111"><span class="label">111</span></a> In Verrem,
+Actio Prima, xvi.</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_112_112" id="Footnote_112_112"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor_112_112"><span class="label">112</span></a> In Verrem,
+Actio Prima, xvi.</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_113_113" id="Footnote_113_113"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor_113_113"><span class="label">113</span></a> We are to
+understand that the purchaser at the auction having named the sum
+for which he would do the work, the estate of the minor, who was
+responsible for the condition of the temple, was saddled with that
+amount.</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_114_114" id="Footnote_114_114"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor_114_114"><span class="label">114</span></a> In Verrem,
+Actio Secunda, lib. ii., vii.</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_115_115" id="Footnote_115_115"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor_115_115"><span class="label">115</span></a> Ibid.,
+ix.</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_116_116" id="Footnote_116_116"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor_116_116"><span class="label">116</span></a> Ibid.,
+lib. ii., xiv.</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_117_117" id="Footnote_117_117"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor_117_117"><span class="label">117</span></a> See
+Appendix C.</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_118_118" id="Footnote_118_118"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor_118_118"><span class="label">118</span></a> In Verrem,
+Actio Secunda, lib. ii., ca. xxxvi.</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_119_119" id="Footnote_119_119"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor_119_119"><span class="label">119</span></a> Ibid. "Una
+nox intercesserat, quam iste Dorotheum sic diligebat, ut diceres,
+omnia inter eos esse communia."&mdash;wife and all. "Iste" always
+means Verres in these narratives.</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_120_120" id="Footnote_120_120"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor_120_120"><span class="label">120</span></a> These were
+burning political questions of the moment. It was as though an
+advocate of our days should desire some disgraced member of
+Parliament to go down to the House and assist the Government in
+protecting Turkey in Asia and invading Zululand.</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_121_121" id="Footnote_121_121"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor_121_121"><span class="label">121</span></a> "Sit in
+ejus exercitu signifer." The "ejus" was Hortensius, the coming
+Consul, too whom Cicero intended to be considered as pointing. For
+the passage, see In Verrem, Actio Secunda, lib. ii., xxxi.</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_122_122" id="Footnote_122_122"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor_122_122"><span class="label">122</span></a> In Verrem,
+Actio Secunda, lib. iii., 11.</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_123_123" id="Footnote_123_123"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor_123_123"><span class="label">123</span></a> "Exegi
+monumentum &aelig;re perennius," said Horace, gloriously. "Sum pius
+&AElig;neas" is Virgil's expression, put into the mouth of his hero.
+"Ipse Menaleas," said Virgil himself. Homer and Sophocles introduce
+their heroes with self-sounded trumpetings:</p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">&#917;&#7988;&#956;' &#927;&#948;&#965;&#963;&#963;&#949;&#8058;&#962; &#916;&#945;&#949;&#961;&#964;&#953;&#8049;&#948;&#951;&#962; &#8005;&#962; &#960;&#945;&#963;&#953; &#948;&#8057;&#955;&#959;&#953;&#963;&#953;</span>
+<span class="i0">&#7944;&#957;&#952;&#961;&#8061;&#960;&#959;&#953;&#963;&#953; &#956;&#8051;&#955;&#969;, &#954;&#945;&#953; &#956;&#8050;&#965; &#954;&#955;&#8051;&#959;&#962; &#959;&#8016;&#961;&#945;&#957;&#8056;n &#953;&#954;&#949;&#953;.</span>
+<span class="i6">Odyssey,book ix., 19 and 20.</span>
+<span class="i10">&nbsp;</span>
+<span class="i3">&#8009; &#960;&#8118;&#963;&#953; &#954;&#955;&#949;&#953;&#957;&#959;&#962; &#927;&#7984;&#948;&#8055;&#960;&#959;&#965;&#962; &#954;&#945;&#955;&#959;&#8059;&#956;&#949;&#957;&#959;&#962;.</span>
+<span class="i10">&OElig;dipus Tyrannus,&nbsp;8.</span></div>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_124_124" id="Footnote_124_124"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor_124_124"><span class="label">124</span></a> Pro
+Plancio, xxvi.: "Frumenti in summa caritate maximum numerum miseram;
+negotiatoribus comis, mercatoribus justus, municipibus liberalis,
+sociis abstinens, omnibus eram visus in omni officio
+diligentissimus."</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_125_125" id="Footnote_125_125"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor_125_125"><span class="label">125</span></a> In Verrem,
+Actio Secunda, lib. iii., ix.: "Is erit Apronius ille; qui, ut ipse
+non solum vita, sed etiam corpore atque ore significat, immensa
+aliqua vorago est ac gurges vitiorum turpitudinumque omnium. Hunc
+in omnibus stupris, hunc in fanorum expilationibus, hunc in impuris
+conviviis principem adhibebat; tantamque habebat morum similitudo
+conjunctionem atque concordiam, ut Apronius, qui aliis inhumanus ac
+barbarus, isti uni commodus ac disertus videretur; ut quem omnes
+odissent neque videre vellent sine eo iste esse non posset; ut quum
+alii ne conviviis quidem iisdem quibus Apronius, hic iisdem etiam
+poculis uteretur, postremo, ut, odor Apronii teterrimus oris et
+corporis, quem, ut aiunt, ne besti&aelig; quidem ferre possent, uni isti
+suavis et jucundus videretur. Ille erat in tribunali proximus; in
+cubiculo socius; in convivio dominus, ac tum maxime, quum,
+accubante pr&aelig;textato pr&aelig;toris filio, in convivio saltare nudus
+c&oelig;perat."</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_126_126" id="Footnote_126_126"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor_126_126"><span class="label">126</span></a> A great
+deal is said of the <i>Cybea</i> in this and the last speech. The
+money expended on it was passed through the accounts as though the
+ship had been built for the defence of the island from pirates, but
+it was intended solely for the depository of the governor's
+plunder.</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_127_127" id="Footnote_127_127"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor_127_127"><span class="label">127</span></a> In Verrem,
+Actio Secunda, lib. iv., vii.</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_128_128" id="Footnote_128_128"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor_128_128"><span class="label">128</span></a> In Verrem,
+Actio Secunda, lib. iv., lvii.</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_129_129" id="Footnote_129_129"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor_129_129"><span class="label">129</span></a> In Verrem,
+Actio Secunda, lib.v., lxvi.: "Facinus est vinciri civem Romanum;
+scelus verberari; prope parricidium necari; quid dicam in
+crucem tollere!"</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_130_130" id="Footnote_130_130"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor_130_130"><span class="label">130</span></a> In Verrem,
+Actio Secunda, lib. v., lxv.</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_131_131" id="Footnote_131_131"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor_131_131"><span class="label">131</span></a> In Verrem,
+Actio Secunda, lib. v., xx.: "Onere suo plane captam atque
+depressam."</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_132_132" id="Footnote_132_132"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor_132_132"><span class="label">132</span></a> In Verrem,
+Actio Secunda, lib. v., xxvi.</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_133_133" id="Footnote_133_133"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor_133_133"><span class="label">133</span></a> Ibid.,
+xxviii.</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_134_134" id="Footnote_134_134"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor_134_134"><span class="label">134</span></a> Pro
+Fonteio, xiii.</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_135_135" id="Footnote_135_135"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor_135_135"><span class="label">135</span></a> De
+Oratore, lib.ii., lix.: "Perspicitis, hoc genus quam sit facetum,
+quam elegans, quam oratorium, sive habeas vere, quod narrare
+possis, quod tamen, est mendaciunculis aspergendum, sive fingas."
+Either invent a story, or if you have an old one, add on something
+so as to make it really funny. Is there a parson, a bishop, an
+archbishop, who, if he have any sense of humor about him, does not
+do the same?</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_136_136" id="Footnote_136_136"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor_136_136"><span class="label">136</span></a> Cicero,
+Pro Cluentio, l., explains very clearly his own idea as to his own
+speeches as an advocate, and may be accepted, perhaps, as
+explaining the ideas of barristers of to-day. "He errs," he says,
+"who thinks that he gets my own opinions in speeches made in law
+courts; such speeches are what the special cases require, and are
+not to be taken as coming from the advocate as his own."</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_137_137" id="Footnote_137_137"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor_137_137"><span class="label">137</span></a> When the
+question is discussed, we are forced rather to wonder how many of
+the great historical doings of the time are not mentioned, or are
+mentioned very slightly, in Cicero's letters. Of Pompey's treatment
+of the pirates, and of his battling in the East, little or nothing
+is said, nothing of C&aelig;sar's doings in Spain. Mention is made
+of C&aelig;sar's great operations in Gaul only in reference to the
+lieutenancy of Cicero's brother Quintus, and to the employment of
+his young friend Trebatius. Nothing is said of the manner of
+C&aelig;sar's coming into Rome after passing the Rubicon; nothing
+of the manner of fighting at Dyrrachium and Pharsalia; very little
+of the death of Pompey; nothing of C&aelig;sar's delay in Egypt.
+The letters deal with Cicero's personal doings and thoughts, and
+with the politics of Rome as a city. The passage to which allusion
+is made occurs in the life of Atticus, ca. xvi: "Qu&aelig; qui legat non
+multum desideret historiam contextam illorum temporum."</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_138_138" id="Footnote_138_138"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor_138_138"><span class="label">138</span></a> Jean
+George Greefe was a German, who spent his life as a professor at
+Leyden, and, among other classical labors, arranged and edited the
+letters of Cicero. He died in 1703.</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_139_139" id="Footnote_139_139"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor_139_139"><span class="label">139</span></a> It must be
+explained, however, that continued research and increased knowledge
+have caused the order of the letters, and the dates assigned to
+them, to be altered from time to time; and, though much has been
+done to achieve accuracy, more remains to be done. In my references
+to the letters I at first gave them, both to the arrangement made
+by Gr&aelig;vius and to the numbers assigned in the edition I am using;
+but I have found that the numbers would only mislead, as no
+numbering has been yet adopted as fixed. Arbitrary and even
+fantastic as is the arrangement of Gr&aelig;vius, it is better to
+confine myself to that because it has been acknowledged, and will
+enable my readers to find the letters if they wish to do so. Should
+Mr. Tyrrell continue and complete his edition of the correspondence,
+he will go far to achieve the desired accuracy. A second volume has
+appeared since this work of mine has been in the press.</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_140_140" id="Footnote_140_140"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor_140_140"><span class="label">140</span></a> The
+peculiarities of Cicero's character are nowhere so clearly legible
+as in his dealings with and words about his daughter. There is an
+effusion of love, and then of sorrow when she dies, which is
+un-Roman, almost feminine, but very touching.</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_141_141" id="Footnote_141_141"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor_141_141"><span class="label">141</span></a> I annex a
+passage from our well known English translation: "The power of the
+pirates had its foundation in Cilicia. Their progress was the more
+dangerous, because at first it had been but little noticed. In the
+Mithridatic war they assumed new confidence and courage, on account
+of some services which they had rendered the king. After this, the
+Romans being engaged in civil war at the very gates of their
+capital, the sea was left unguarded, and the pirates by degrees
+attempted higher things&mdash;not only attacking ships, but islands
+and maritime towns. Many persons distinguished for their wealth,
+birth and capacity embarked with them, and assisted in their
+depredations, as if their employment had been worthy the ambition
+of men of honor. They had in various places arsenals, ports, and
+watch-towers, all strongly fortified. Their fleets were not only
+extremely well manned, supplied with skilful pilots, and fitted for
+their business by their lightness and celerity, but there was a
+parade of vanity about them, more mortifying than their strength,
+in gilded sterns, purple canopies, and plated oars, as if they took
+a pride and triumphed in their villany. Music resounded, and
+drunken revels were exhibited on every coast. Here generals were
+made prisoners; and there the cities which the pirates had seized
+upon were paying their ransom, to the great disgrace of the Roman
+power. The number of their galleys amounted to a thousand, and the
+cities taken to four hundred." The passage is taken from the life
+of Pompey.</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_142_142" id="Footnote_142_142"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor_142_142"><span class="label">142</span></a> Florus,
+lib. iii., 6: "An felicitatem, quod ne una cuidam navis amissa est;
+an vero perpetuitatem, quod amplius pirat&aelig; non fuerunt."</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_143_143" id="Footnote_143_143"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor_143_143"><span class="label">143</span></a> Of the
+singular trust placed in Pompey there are very many proofs in the
+history of Rome at this period, but none, perhaps, clearer than the
+exception made in this favor in the wording of laws. In the
+agrarian law proposed by the Tribune Rullus, and opposed by Cicero
+when he was Consul, there is a clause commanding all Generals under
+the Republic to account for the spoils taken by them in war. But
+there is a special exemption in favor of Pompey. "Pompeius exceptus
+esto." It is as though no Tribune dared to propose a law affecting
+Pompey.</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_144_144" id="Footnote_144_144"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor_144_144"><span class="label">144</span></a> See
+Appendix D.</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_145_145" id="Footnote_145_145"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor_145_145"><span class="label">145</span></a> Asconius
+Pedianus was a grammarian who lived in the reign of Tiberius, and
+whose commentaries on Cicero's speeches, as far as they go, are
+very useful in explaining to us the meaning of the orator. We have
+his notes on these two Cornelian orations and some others,
+especially on that of Pro Milone. There are also commentaries on
+some of the Verrine orations&mdash;not by Asconius, but from the
+pen of some writer now called Pseudo-Asconius, having been long
+supposed to have come from Asconius. They, too, go far to elucidate
+much which would otherwise be dark to us.</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_146_146" id="Footnote_146_146"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor_146_146"><span class="label">146</span></a> Quint.,
+lib. viii., 3. The critic is explaining the effect of ornament in
+oratory&mdash;of that beauty of language which with the people has
+more effect than argument&mdash;and he breaks forth himself into
+perhaps the most eloquent passage in the whole Institute: "Cicero,
+in pleading for Cornelius, fought with arms which were as splendid
+as they were strong. It was not simply by putting the facts before
+the judges, by talking usefully, in good language and clearly, that
+he succeeded in forcing the Roman people to acknowledge by their
+voices and by their hands their admiration; it was the grandeur of
+his words, their magnificence, their beauty, their dignity, which
+produced that outburst."</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_147_147" id="Footnote_147_147"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor_147_147"><span class="label">147</span></a> Orator.,
+lxvii. and lxx.</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_148_148" id="Footnote_148_148"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor_148_148"><span class="label">148</span></a> De Lege
+Agraria, ii., 2: "Meis comitiis non tabellam, vindicem tacit&aelig;
+libertatis, sed vocem vivam pr&aelig; vobis, indicem vestrarum erga me
+voluntatum ac studiorum tulistis. Itaque me * * * una voce
+universus populus Romanus consulem declaravit."</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_149_149" id="Footnote_149_149"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor_149_149"><span class="label">149</span></a> Sall.,
+Conj. Catilinaria, xxi.: "Petere consulatum C. Antonium, quem sibi
+collegam fore speraret, hominem et familiarem, et omnibus
+necessitudinibus circumventum." Sallust would no doubt have put
+anything into Catiline's mouth which would suit his own purpose;
+but it was necessary for his purpose that he should confine himself
+to credibilities.</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_150_150" id="Footnote_150_150"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor_150_150"><span class="label">150</span></a> Cicero
+himself tells us that many short-hand writers were sent by
+him&mdash;"Plures librarii," as he calls them&mdash;to take down
+the words of the Agrarian law which Rullus proposed. De Lege Agra.,
+ii., 5. Pliny, Quintilian, and Martial speak of these men as
+Notarii. Martial explains the nature of their business:</p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+<div class="stanza"><span class="i0">"Currant verba licet, manus
+est velocior illis;</span> <span class="i4">Nondum lingua suum,
+dextra peregit opus."&mdash;xiv., 208.</span></div>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_151_151" id="Footnote_151_151"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor_151_151"><span class="label">151</span></a>Ad Att.,
+ii., 1. "Oratiunculas," he calls them. It would seem here that he
+pretends to have preserved these speeches only at the request of
+some admiring young friends. Demosthenes, of course, was the
+"fellow-citizen," so called in badinage, because Atticus, deserting
+Rome, lived much at Athens.</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_152_152" id="Footnote_152_152"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor_152_152"><span class="label">152</span></a> This
+speech, which has been lost, was addressed to the people with the
+view of reconciling them to a law in accordance with which the
+Equites were entitled to special seats in the theatre. It was
+altogether successful.</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_153_153" id="Footnote_153_153"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor_153_153"><span class="label">153</span></a> This,
+which is extant, was spoken in defence of an old man who was
+accused of a political homicide thirty-seven years before&mdash;of
+having killed, that is, Saturninus the Tribune. Cicero was
+unsuccessful, but Rabirius was saved by the common subterfuge of an
+interposition of omens. There are some very fine passages in this
+oration.</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_154_154" id="Footnote_154_154"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor_154_154"><span class="label">154</span></a> This has
+been lost. Cicero, though he acknowledged the iniquity of Sulla's
+proscriptions, showed that their effects could not now be reversed
+without further revolutions. He gained his point on this
+occasion.</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_155_155" id="Footnote_155_155"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor_155_155"><span class="label">155</span></a> This has
+been lost. Cicero, in accordance with the practice of the time, was
+entitled to the government of a province when ceasing to be Consul.
+The rich province of Macedonia fell to him by lot, but he made it
+over to his colleague Antony, thus purchasing, if not Antony's
+co-operation, at any rate his quiescence, in regard to Catiline. He
+also made over the province of Gaul, which then fell to his lot, to
+Metellus, not wishing to leave the city. All this had to be
+explained to the people.</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_156_156" id="Footnote_156_156"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor_156_156"><span class="label">156</span></a> It will be
+seen that he also defended Rabirius in his consular year, but had
+thought fit to include that among his consular speeches. Some doubt
+has been thrown, especially by Mr. Tyrrell, on the genuineness of
+Cicero's letter giving the list of his "oratiunculas consulares,"
+because the speeches Pro Murena and Pro Pisone are omitted, and as
+containing some "rather un-Ciceronian expressions." My respect for
+Mr. Tyrrell's scholarship and judgment is so great that I hardly
+dare to express an opinion contrary to his; but I should be sorry
+to exclude a letter so Ciceronian in its feeling. And if we are to
+have liberty to exclude without evidence, where are we to stop?</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_157_157" id="Footnote_157_157"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor_157_157"><span class="label">157</span></a> Corn.
+Nepo., Epaminondas, I.: "We know that with us" (Romans) "music is
+foreign to the employments of a great man. To dance would amount to
+a vice. But these things among the Greeks are not only pleasant but
+praiseworthy."</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_158_158" id="Footnote_158_158"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor_158_158"><span class="label">158</span></a> Conj.
+Catilinaria, xxv.</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_159_159" id="Footnote_159_159"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor_159_159"><span class="label">159</span></a> Horace,
+Epis. i., xvii.:</p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+<div class="stanza"><span class="i05">"Si sciret regibus uti</span>
+<span class="i0">Fastidiret olus qui me notat."</span></div>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_160_160" id="Footnote_160_160"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor_160_160"><span class="label">160</span></a> Pro
+Murena, xxix.</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_161_161" id="Footnote_161_161"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor_161_161"><span class="label">161</span></a> Pro
+Murena, x. This Sulpicius was afterward Consul with M. Marcellus,
+and in the days of the Philippics was sent as one of a deputation
+to Antony. He died while on the journey. He is said to have been a
+man of excellent character, and a thorough-going conservative.</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_162_162" id="Footnote_162_162"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor_162_162"><span class="label">162</span></a> Pro
+Murena, xi.</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_163_163" id="Footnote_163_163"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor_163_163"><span class="label">163</span></a> Ibid.,
+xi.</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_164_164" id="Footnote_164_164"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor_164_164"><span class="label">164</span></a> Ibid.,
+xii.</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_165_165" id="Footnote_165_165"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor_165_165"><span class="label">165</span></a> Ibid.,
+xiii.</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_166_166" id="Footnote_166_166"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor_166_166"><span class="label">166</span></a> Ibid.,
+xi.</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_167_167" id="Footnote_167_167"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor_167_167"><span class="label">167</span></a> Pro
+Cluentio, 1.</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_168_168" id="Footnote_168_168"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor_168_168"><span class="label">168</span></a> De Lege
+Agraria, ii., 5.</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_169_169" id="Footnote_169_169"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor_169_169"><span class="label">169</span></a> He alludes
+here to his own colleague Antony, whom through his whole year of
+office he had to watch lest the second Consul should join the
+enemies whom he fears&mdash;should support Rullus or go over to
+Catiline. With this view, choosing the lesser of the two evils, he
+bribes Antony with the government of Macedonia.</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_170_170" id="Footnote_170_170"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor_170_170"><span class="label">170</span></a> De Lege
+Agraria, i., 7 and 8.</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_171_171" id="Footnote_171_171"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor_171_171"><span class="label">171</span></a> The "jus
+imaginis" belonged to those whose ancestors was counted an &AElig;dile, a
+Pr&aelig;tor, or a Consul. The descendants of such officers were
+entitled to have these images, whether in bronze, or marble, or
+wax, carried at the funerals of their friends.</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_172_172" id="Footnote_172_172"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor_172_172"><span class="label">172</span></a> Forty
+years since, Marius who was also "novus homo," and also, singularly
+enough, from Arpinum, had been made Consul, but not with the
+glorious circumstances as now detailed by Cicero.</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_173_173" id="Footnote_173_173"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor_173_173"><span class="label">173</span></a> De Lege
+Agraria, ii., 1, 2, and 3.</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_174_174" id="Footnote_174_174"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor_174_174"><span class="label">174</span></a> See
+Introduction.</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_175_175" id="Footnote_175_175"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor_175_175"><span class="label">175</span></a> Pliny the
+elder, Hist. Nat., lib. vii., ca. xxxi.</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_176_176" id="Footnote_176_176"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor_176_176"><span class="label">176</span></a> The word
+is "proscripsisti," "you proscribed him." For the proper
+understanding of this, the bearing of Cicero toward Antony during
+the whole period of the Philippics must be considered.</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_177_177" id="Footnote_177_177"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor_177_177"><span class="label">177</span></a> Catiline,
+by Mr. Beesly. Fortnightly Review, 1865.</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_178_178" id="Footnote_178_178"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor_178_178"><span class="label">178</span></a> Pro
+Murena, xxv.: "Quem omnino vivum illinc exire non oportuerat." I
+think we must conclude from this that Cicero had almost expected
+that his attack upon the conspirators, in his first Catiline
+oration, would have the effect of causing him to be killed.</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_179_179" id="Footnote_179_179"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor_179_179"><span class="label">179</span></a> &AElig;neid,
+viii., 668:</p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+<div class="stanza"><span class="i6.5"><i>"Te, Catilina,
+minaci</i></span> <span class="i0"><i>Pendentem
+scopulo."</i></span></div>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_180_180" id="Footnote_180_180"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor_180_180"><span class="label">180</span></a> Velleius
+Paterculus, lib. ii., xxxiv.</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_181_181" id="Footnote_181_181"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor_181_181"><span class="label">181</span></a> Juvenal,
+Sat. ii., 27: "Catilina Cethegum!" Could such a one as Catiline
+answer such a one as Cethegus? Sat. viii., 232: "Arma tamen vos
+Nocturna et flammas domibus templisque parastis." Catiline, in
+spite of his noble blood, had endeavored to burn the city. Sat.
+xiv., 41: "Catilinam quocunque in populo videas." It is hard to
+find a good man, but it is easy enough to put your hand anywhere on
+a Catiline.</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_182_182" id="Footnote_182_182"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor_182_182"><span class="label">182</span></a> Val
+Maximus, lib. v., viii., 5; lib. ix., 1, 9; lib. ix., xi., 3.</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_183_183" id="Footnote_183_183"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor_183_183"><span class="label">183</span></a> Florus,
+lib. iv.</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_184_184" id="Footnote_184_184"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor_184_184"><span class="label">184</span></a> Mommsen's
+History of Rome, book v., chap v.</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_185_185" id="Footnote_185_185"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor_185_185"><span class="label">185</span></a> I feel
+myself constrained here to allude to the treatment given to
+Catiline by Dean Merivale in his little work on the two Roman
+Triumvirates. The Dean's sympathies are very near akin to those of
+Mr. Beesly, but he values too highly his own historical judgment to
+allow it to run on all fours with Mr. Beesly's sympathies. "The
+real designs," he says, "of the infamous Catiline and his
+associates must indeed always remain shrouded in
+mystery. * * * Nevertheless, it is impossible to deny, and
+on the whole it would be unreasonable to doubt, that such a
+conspiracy there really was, and that the very existence of the
+commonwealth was for a moment seriously imperilled." It would
+certainly be unreasonable to doubt it. But the Dean, though he
+calls Catiline infamous, and acknowledges the conspiracy, never-
+theless give us ample proof of his sympathy with the conspirators,
+or rather of his strong feeling against Cicero. Speaking of
+Catiline at a certain moment, he says that he "was not yet hunted
+down." He speaks of the "upstart Cicero," and plainly shows us that
+his heart is with the side which had been C&aelig;sar's. Whether
+conspiracy or no conspiracy, whether with or without wholesale
+murder and rapine, a single master with a strong hand was the one
+remedy needed for Rome! The reader must understand that Cicero's
+one object in public life was to resist that lesson.</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_186_186" id="Footnote_186_186"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor_186_186"><span class="label">186</span></a> Asconius,
+"In toga candida," reports that Fenestella, a writer of the time of
+Augustus, had declared that Cicero had defended Catiline; but
+Asconius gives his reasons for disbelieving the story.</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_187_187" id="Footnote_187_187"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor_187_187"><span class="label">187</span></a> Cicero,
+however, declares that he has made a difference between traitors to
+their country and other criminals. Pro P. Sulla, ca. iii.: "Verum
+etiam qu&aelig;dam contagio sceleris, si defendas eum, quem obstrictum
+esse patri&aelig; parricidio suspicere." Further on in the same oration,
+ca. vi., he explains that he had refused to defend Autronius
+because he had known Autronius to be a conspirator against his
+country. I cannot admit the truth of the argument in which Mr.
+Forsyth defends the practice of the English bar in this respect,
+and in doing so presses hard upon Cicero. "At Rome," he says, "it
+was different. The advocate there was conceived to have a much
+wider discretion than we allow." Neither in Rome nor in England has
+the advocate been held to be disgraced by undertaking the defence
+of bad men who have been notoriously guilty. What an English
+barrister may do, there was no reason that a Roman advocate should
+not do, in regard to simple criminality. Cicero himself has
+explained in the passage I have quoted how the Roman practice did
+differ from ours in regard to treason. He has stated also that he
+knew nothing of the first conspiracy when he offered to defend
+Catiline on the score of provincial peculations. No writer has been
+heavy on Hortensius for defending Verres, but only because he took
+bribes from Verres.</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_188_188" id="Footnote_188_188"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor_188_188"><span class="label">188</span></a> Publius
+Cornelius Sulla, and Publius Autronius P&oelig;tus.</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_189_189" id="Footnote_189_189"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor_189_189"><span class="label">189</span></a> Pro P.
+Sulla, iv. He declares that he had known nothing of the first
+conspiracy and gives the reason: "Quod nondum penitus in republica
+versabar, quod nondum ad propositum mihi finem honoris
+perveneram, quod mea me ambitio et forensis labor ab omni illa
+cogitatione abstrahebat."</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_190_190" id="Footnote_190_190"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor_190_190"><span class="label">190</span></a> Sallust,
+Catilinaria, xviii.</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_191_191" id="Footnote_191_191"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor_191_191"><span class="label">191</span></a> Livy,
+Epitome, lib. ci.</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_192_192" id="Footnote_192_192"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor_192_192"><span class="label">192</span></a> Suetonius,
+J. C&aelig;sar, ix.</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_193_193" id="Footnote_193_193"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor_193_193"><span class="label">193</span></a> Mommsen,
+book v., ca. v., says of C&aelig;sar and Crassus as to this period,
+"that this notorious action corresponds with striking exactness to
+the secret action which this report ascribes to them." By which he
+means to imply that they probably were concerned in the plot.</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_194_194" id="Footnote_194_194"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor_194_194"><span class="label">194</span></a> Sallust
+tells us, Catilinaria, xlix., that Cicero was instigated by special
+enemies of C&aelig;sar to include C&aelig;sar in the accusation,
+but refused to mix himself up in so great a crime. Crassus also was
+accused, but probably wrongfully. Sallust declares that an attempt
+was made to murder C&aelig;sar as he left the Senate. There was
+probably some quarrel and hustling, but no more.</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_195_195" id="Footnote_195_195"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor_195_195"><span class="label">195</span></a> Sallust,
+Catilinaria, xxxvii.: "Omnino cuncta plebes, novarum rerum studio,
+Catilin&aelig; incepta probabat." By the words "novarum rerum
+studio"&mdash;by a love of revolution&mdash;we can understand the
+kind of popularity which Sallust intended to express.</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_196_196" id="Footnote_196_196"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor_196_196"><span class="label">196</span></a> Pro
+Murena, xxv.</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_197_197" id="Footnote_197_197"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor_197_197"><span class="label">197</span></a> "Darent
+operam consules ne quid detrimenti respublica capiat."</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_198_198" id="Footnote_198_198"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor_198_198"><span class="label">198</span></a>
+Catilinaria, xxxi.</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_199_199" id="Footnote_199_199"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor_199_199"><span class="label">199</span></a>
+Quintilian, lib. xii., 10: "Quem tamen et suorum homines temporum
+incessere audebant, ut tumidiorem, et asianum, et redundantem."</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_200_200" id="Footnote_200_200"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor_200_200"><span class="label">200</span></a> Orator.,
+xxxvii.: "A nobis homo audacissimus Catilina in senatu accusatus
+obmutuit."</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_201_201" id="Footnote_201_201"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor_201_201"><span class="label">201</span></a> 2
+Catilinaria, xxxi.</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_202_202" id="Footnote_202_202"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor_202_202"><span class="label">202</span></a> In the
+first of them to the Senate, chap. ix., he declares this to Catiline
+himself: "Si mea voce perterritus ire in exsilium animum induxeris,
+quanta tempestas invidi&aelig; nobis, si minus in pr&aelig;sens tempus,
+recenti memoria scelerum tuorum, at in posteritatem impendeat." He
+goes on to declare that he will endure all that, if by so doing he
+can save the Republic. "Sed est mihi tanti; dummodo ista privata sit
+calamitas, et a reipublic&aelig; periculis sejungatur."</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_203_203" id="Footnote_203_203"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor_203_203"><span class="label">203</span></a> Sallust,
+Catilinaria, xli.: "Itaque Q. Fabio Sang&aelig; cujus patrocinio civitas
+plurimum utebatur rem omnem uti cognoverant aperiunt."</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_204_204" id="Footnote_204_204"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor_204_204"><span class="label">204</span></a> Horace,
+Epo. xvi., 6: "Novisque rebus infidelis Allobrox." The unhappy
+Savoyard has from this line been known through ages as a
+conspirator, false even to his fellow-conspirators.</p>
+
+<p>Juvenal, vii.,
+214: "Rufum qui toties Ciceronem Allobroga dixit." Some Rufus,
+acting as advocate, had thought to put down Cicero by calling him
+an Allobrogian.</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_205_205" id="Footnote_205_205"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor_205_205"><span class="label">205</span></a> The words
+in which this honor was conferred he himself repeats: "Quod urbem
+incendiis, c&aelig;de cives, Italiam bello liberassem"&mdash;"because I
+had rescued the city from fire, the citizens from slaughter, and
+Italy from war."</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_206_206" id="Footnote_206_206"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor_206_206"><span class="label">206</span></a> It is
+necessary in all oratory to read something between the lines. It is
+allowed to the speaker to produce effect by diminishing and
+exaggerating. I think we should detract something from the praises
+bestowed on Catiline's military virtues. The bigger Catiline could
+be made to appear, the greater would be the honor of having driven
+him out of the city.</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_207_207" id="Footnote_207_207"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor_207_207"><span class="label">207</span></a> In
+Catilinam, iii., xi.</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_208_208" id="Footnote_208_208"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor_208_208"><span class="label">208</span></a> In
+Catilinam, ibid., xii.: "Ne mihi noceant vestrum est
+providere."</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_209_209" id="Footnote_209_209"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor_209_209"><span class="label">209</span></a> "Prince of
+the Senate" was an honorary title, conferred on some man of mark as
+a dignity&mdash;at this period on some ex-Consul; it conferred no
+power. Cicero, the Consul who had convened the Senate, called on
+the speakers as he thought fit.</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_210_210" id="Footnote_210_210"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor_210_210"><span class="label">210</span></a>
+C&aelig;sar, according to Sallust, had referred to the Lex Porcia.
+Cicero alludes, and makes C&aelig;sar allude, to the Lex Sempronia.
+The Porcian law, as we are told by Livy, was passed <span class=
+"smcap">b.c.</span> 299, and forbade that a Roman should be
+scourged or put to death. The Lex Sempronia was introduced by C.
+Gracchus, and enacted that the life of a citizen should not be
+taken without the voice of the citizens.</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_211_211" id="Footnote_211_211"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor_211_211"><span class="label">211</span></a> Velleius
+Paterculus, xxxvi.: "Consulatui Ciceronis non mediocre adjecit
+decus natus eo anno Divus Augustus."</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_212_212" id="Footnote_212_212"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor_212_212"><span class="label">212</span></a> In
+Pisonem, iii.: "Sine ulla dubitatione juravi rempublicam atque hanc
+urbem mea unius opera esse salvam."</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_213_213" id="Footnote_213_213"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor_213_213"><span class="label">213</span></a> Dio
+Cassius tells the same story, lib. xxxvii., ca. 38, but he adds
+that Cicero was more hated than ever because of the oath he took:
+&#954;&#945;&#8054; &#8005; &#956;&#8051;&#957; &#954;&#945;&#8054; &#7952;&#954; &#964;&#959;&#8059;&#964;&#959;&#965; &#960;&#959;&#955;&#8058; &#956;&#8118;&#955;&#955;&#959;&#957; &#7952;&#956;&#953;&#963;&#8053;&#952;&#951;.</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_214_214" id="Footnote_214_214"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor_214_214"><span class="label">214</span></a> It is the
+only letter given in the collection as having been addressed direct
+to Pompey. In two letters written some years later to Atticus,
+<span class="smcap">b.c.</span> 49, lib. viii., 11, and lib. viii.,
+12, he sends copies of a correspondence between himself and Pompey
+and two of the Pompeian generals.</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_215_215" id="Footnote_215_215"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor_215_215"><span class="label">215</span></a> Lib. v.,
+7. It is hardly necessary to explain that the younger Scipio and
+L&aelig;lius were as famous for their friendship as Pylades and Orestes.
+The "Virtus Scipiad&aelig; et mitis sapientia L&aelig;li" have been made
+famous to us all by Horace.</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_216_216" id="Footnote_216_216"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor_216_216"><span class="label">216</span></a> These two
+brothers, neither of whom was remarkable for great qualities,
+though they were both to be Consuls, were the last known of the
+great family of the Metelli, a branch of the "Gens C&aelig;cilia."
+Among them had been many who had achieved great names for
+themselves in Roman history, on account of the territories added to
+the springing Roman Empire by their victories. There had been a
+Macedonicus, a Numidicus, a Balearicus, and a Creticus. It is of
+the first that Velleius Paterculus sings the glory&mdash;lib. i.,
+ca. xi., and the elder Pliny repeats the story, Hist. Nat., vii.,
+44&mdash;that of his having been carried to the grave by four sons,
+of whom at the time of his death three had been Consuls, one had
+been a Pr&aelig;tor, two had enjoyed triumphal honors, and one had been
+Censor. In looking through the consular list of Cicero's lifetime,
+I find that there were no less than seven taken from the family of
+the Metelli. These two brothers, Metellus Nepos and Celer, again
+became friends to Cicero; Nepos, who had stopped his speech and
+assisted in forcing him into exile, having assisted as Consul in
+obtaining his recall from exile. It is very difficult to follow the
+twistings and turnings of Roman friendships at this period.</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_217_217" id="Footnote_217_217"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor_217_217"><span class="label">217</span></a> Velleius
+Paterculus, lib. ii., ca. xiv. Paterculus tells us how, when the
+architect offered to build the house so as to hide its interior
+from the gaze of the world, Drusus desired the man so to construct
+it that all the world might see what he was doing.</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_218_218" id="Footnote_218_218"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor_218_218"><span class="label">218</span></a> It may be
+worth while to give a translation of the anecdote as told by Aulus
+Gellius, and to point out that the authors intention was to show
+what a clever fellow Cicero was. Cicero did defend P. Sulla this
+year; but whence came the story of the money borrowed from Sulla we
+do not know. "It is a trick of rhetoric craftily to confess charges
+made, so as not to come within the reach of the law. So that, if
+anything base be alleged which cannot be denied, you may turn it
+aside with a joke, and make it a matter of laughter rather than of
+disgrace, as it is written that Cicero did when, with a drolling
+word, he made little of a charge which he could not deny. For when
+he was anxious to buy a house on the Palatine Hill, and had not the
+ready money, he quietly borrowed from P. Sulla&mdash;who was then
+about to stand his trial, 'sestertium viciens'&mdash;twenty million
+sesterces. When that became known, before the purchase was made,
+and it was objected to him that he had borrowed the money from a
+client, then Cicero, instigated by the unexpected charge, denied
+the loan, and denied also that he was going to buy the house. But
+when he had bought it and the fib was thrown in his teeth, he
+laughed heartily, and asked whether men had so lost their senses as
+not to be aware that a prudent father of a family would deny an
+intended purchase rather than raise the price of the article
+against himself."&mdash;Noctes Attic&aelig;, xii., 12. Aulus Gellius
+though he tells us that the story was written, does not tell us
+where he read it.</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_219_219" id="Footnote_219_219"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor_219_219"><span class="label">219</span></a> I must say
+this, "pace" Mr. Tyrrell, who, in his note on the letter to
+Atticus, lib. i., 12, attempts to show that some bargain for such
+professional fee had been made. Regarding Mr. Tyrrell as a critic
+always fair, and almost always satisfactory, I am sorry to have to
+differ from him; but it seems to me that he, too, has been carried
+away by the feeling that in defending a man's character it is best
+to give up some point.</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_220_220" id="Footnote_220_220"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor_220_220"><span class="label">220</span></a> I have
+been amused at finding a discourse, eloquent and most enthusiastic,
+in praise of Cicero and especially of this oration, spoken by M.
+Gueroult at the College of France in June, 1815. The worst literary
+faults laid to the charge of Cicero, if committed by
+him&mdash;which M. Gueroult thinks to be doubtful&mdash;had been
+committed even by Voltaire and Racine! The learned Frenchman, with
+whom I altogether sympathize, rises to an ecstasy of violent
+admiration, and this at the very moment in which Waterloo was being
+fought. But in truth the great doings of the world do not much
+affect individual life. We should play our whist at the clubs
+though the battle of Dorking were being fought.</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_221_221" id="Footnote_221_221"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor_221_221"><span class="label">221</span></a> Pro P.
+Sulla, iv.: "Scis me * * * illorum expertem temporum et
+sermonum fuisse; credo, quod nondum penitus in republica versabar,
+quod nondum ad propositum mihi finem honoris
+perveneram. * * * Quis ergo intererat vestris consiliis?
+Omnes hi, quos vides huic adesse et in primis Q. Hortensius."</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_222_222" id="Footnote_222_222"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor_222_222"><span class="label">222</span></a> Ad Att.,
+lib. i., 12.</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_223_223" id="Footnote_223_223"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor_223_223"><span class="label">223</span></a> Ad Att.,
+lib. i., 13.</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_224_224" id="Footnote_224_224"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor_224_224"><span class="label">224</span></a> Ibid., i.,
+14.</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_225_225" id="Footnote_225_225"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor_225_225"><span class="label">225</span></a>Ibid., i.,
+16: "Vis scire quomodo minus quam soleam pr&aelig;liatus sum."</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_226_226" id="Footnote_226_226"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor_226_226"><span class="label">226</span></a> "You have
+bought a fine house," said Clodius. "There would be more in what
+you say if you could accuse me of buying judges," replied Cicero.
+"The judges would not trust you on your oath," said Clodius,
+referring to the alibi by which he had escaped in opposition to
+Cicero's oath. "Yes," replied Cicero, "twenty-five trusted me; but
+not one of the thirty-one would trust you without having his bribe
+paid beforehand."</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_227_227" id="Footnote_227_227"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor_227_227"><span class="label">227</span></a> Ad Att.,
+i., 14: "Proxime Pompeium sedebam. Intellexi hominem moveri."</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_228_228" id="Footnote_228_228"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor_228_228"><span class="label">228</span></a> Ibid.:
+"Quo modo &#7952;&#957;&#949;&#960;&#949;&#961;&#960;&#949;&#961;&#949;&#965;&#963;&#8049;&#956;&#951;&#957;, novo auditori Pompeio."</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_229_229" id="Footnote_229_229"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor_229_229"><span class="label">229</span></a> Mommsen,
+book v., chap. vi. This probably has been taken from the statement
+of Paterculus, lib. ii., 40: "Quippe plerique non sine exercitu
+venturum in urbem adfirmabant, et libertati public&aelig; statuturum
+arbitrio suo modum. Quo magis hoc homines timuerant, eo gratior
+civilis tanti imperatoris reditus fuit." No doubt there was a dread
+among many of Pompey coming back as Sulla had come: not from
+indications to be found in the character of Pompey, but because
+Sulla had done so.</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_230_230" id="Footnote_230_230"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor_230_230"><span class="label">230</span></a> Florus,
+lib.ii., xix. Having described to us the siege of Numantia, he goes
+on "Hactenus populus Romanus pulcher, egregius, pius, sanctus atque
+magnificus. Reliqua seculi, ut grandia &aelig;que, ita vel magis turbida
+et f&oelig;da".</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_231_231" id="Footnote_231_231"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor_231_231"><span class="label">231</span></a> We have
+not Pollio's poem on the conspiracy, but we have Horace's record of
+Pollio's poem:</p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+<div class="stanza"><span class="i0">Motum ex Metello consule
+civicum,</span> <span class="i0">Bellique causas et vitia, et
+modos,</span> <span class="i3">Ludumque Fortun&aelig;, gravesque</span>
+<span class="i4">Principum amicitias, et arma</span> <span class=
+"i0">Nondum expiatis uncta cruoribus,</span> <span class=
+"i0">Periculos&aelig; plenum opus ale&aelig;,</span> <span class=
+"i3">Tractas, et incedis per ignes</span> <span class=
+"i4">Suppositos cineri doloso.&mdash;Odes, lib. ii., 1.</span></div>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_232_232" id="Footnote_232_232"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor_232_232"><span class="label">232</span></a> The German
+index appeared&mdash;very much after the original work&mdash;as
+late as 1875.</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_233_233" id="Footnote_233_233"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor_233_233"><span class="label">233</span></a> Mommsen,
+lib. v., chap. vi. I cannot admit that Mommsen is strictly
+accurate, as C&aelig;sar had no real idea of democracy. He desired
+to be the Head of the Oligarchs, and, as such, to ingratiate
+himself with the people.</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_234_234" id="Footnote_234_234"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor_234_234"><span class="label">234</span></a> For the
+character of C&aelig;sar generally I would refer readers to
+Suetonius, whose life of the great man is, to my thinking, more
+graphic than any that has been written since. For his anecdotes
+there is little or no evidence. His facts are not all historical.
+His knowledge was very much less accurate than that of modern
+writers who have had the benefit of research and comparison. But
+there was enough of history, of biography, and of tradition to
+enable him to form a true idea of the man. He himself as a narrator
+was neither specially friendly nor specially hostile. He has told
+what was believed at the time, and he has drawn a character that
+agrees perfectly with all that we have learned since.</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_235_235" id="Footnote_235_235"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor_235_235"><span class="label">235</span></a> By no one
+has the character and object of the Triumvirate been so well
+described as by Lucan, who, bombastic as he is, still manages to
+bring home to the reader the ideas as to persons and events which
+he wishes to convey. I have ventured to give in an Appendix, E, the
+passages referred to, with such a translation in prose as I have
+been able to produce. It will be found at the end of this
+volume.</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_236_236" id="Footnote_236_236"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor_236_236"><span class="label">236</span></a>
+Plutarch&mdash;Crassus: &#954;&#945;&#8054; &#963;&#965;&#957;&#8051;&#963;&#964;&#951;&#963;&#949;&#957; &#7952;&#954; &#964;&#8182;&#957; &#964;&#961;&#953;&#8182;&#957; &#7984;&#963;&#967;&#8058;&#957; &#7940;&#956;&#945;&#967;&#959;&#957;.</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_237_237" id="Footnote_237_237"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor_237_237"><span class="label">237</span></a> Velleius
+Paterculus, lib. ii., 44: "Hoc igitur consule, inter eum et Cn.
+Pompeium et M. Crassum inita potenti&aelig; societas, qu&aelig; urbi orbique
+terrarum, nec minus diverso quoque tempore ipsis exitiabilis fuit."
+Suetonius, Julius C&aelig;sar, xix., "Societatem cum utroque
+iniit." Officers called Triumviri were quite common, as were
+Quinqueviri and Decemviri. Livy speaks of a "Triumviratus"&mdash;or
+rather two such offices exercised by one man&mdash;ix., 46. We
+remember, too, that wretch whom Horace gibbeted, Epod. iv.: "Sectus
+flagellis hic triumviralibus." But the word, though in common use,
+was not applied to this conspiracy.</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_238_238" id="Footnote_238_238"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor_238_238"><span class="label">238</span></a> Ad Att.,
+lib.ii., 3: "Is affirmabat, illum omnibus in rebus meo et Pompeii
+consilio usurum, daturumque operam, ut cum Pompeio Crassum
+conjungeret. Hic sunt h&aelig;c. Conjunctio mihi summa cum Pompeio; si
+placet etiam cum C&aelig;sare; reditus in gratiam cum inimicis, pax
+cum multitudine; senectulis otium. Sed me &#954;&#945;&#964;&#945;&#954;&#955;&#949;&#8055;&#962; mea
+illa commovet, qu&aelig; est in libro iii.</p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+<div class="stanza"><span class="i0">"Interea cursus, quos prima a
+parte juvent&aelig;</span> <span class="i0">Quosque adeo consul virtute,
+animoque petisti,</span> <span class="i0">Hos retine, atque, auge
+famam laudesque bonorum."</span></div>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_239_239" id="Footnote_239_239"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor_239_239"><span class="label">239</span></a> Homer,
+Iliad, lib. xii., 243: &#917;&#7990;&#962; &#959;&#7984;&#969;&#957;&#8056;&#962; &#7940;&#961;&#953;&#963;&#964;&#959;&#962; &#7936;&#956;&#8059;&#957;&#949;&#963;&#952;&#945;&#953; &#960;&#949;&#961;&#8054; &#960;&#8049;&#964;&#961;&#945;&#949;&#962;.</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_240_240" id="Footnote_240_240"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor_240_240"><span class="label">240</span></a>
+Middleton's Life of Cicero, vol. i., p. 291.</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_241_241" id="Footnote_241_241"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor_241_241"><span class="label">241</span></a> Pro Domo
+Sua, xvi. This was an oration, as the reader will soon learn more
+at length, in which the orator pleaded for the restoration of his
+town mansion after his return from exile. It has, however, been
+doubted whether the speech as we have it was ever made by
+Cicero.</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_242_242" id="Footnote_242_242"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor_242_242"><span class="label">242</span></a> Suetonius,
+Julius C&aelig;sar, xx.</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_243_243" id="Footnote_243_243"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor_243_243"><span class="label">243</span></a> Ad Att.,
+lib.ii., 1: "Quid qu&aelig;ris?" says Cicero. "Conturbavi Gr&aelig;cam
+nationem"&mdash;"I have put all Greece into a flutter."</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_244_244" id="Footnote_244_244"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor_244_244"><span class="label">244</span></a> De
+Divinatione, lib. i.</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_245_245" id="Footnote_245_245"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor_245_245"><span class="label">245</span></a> Ad Quin.
+Fratrem, lib.i., 1: "Non itineribus tuis perterreri homines? non
+sumptu exhauriri? non adventu commoveri? Esse, quocumque veneris,
+et publice et privatim maximam l&aelig;titiam; quum urbs custodem non
+tyrannum; domus hospitem non expilatorem, recipisse videatur? His
+autem in rebus jam te usus ipse profecto erudivit nequaquam satis
+esse, ipsum hasce habere virtutis, sed esse circumspiciendum
+diligentur, ut in hac custodia provinci&aelig; non te unum, sed omnes
+ministros imperii tui, sociis, et civibus, et reipublic&aelig; pr&aelig;stare
+videare."</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_246_246" id="Footnote_246_246"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor_246_246"><span class="label">246</span></a> Ad Quin.
+Fratrem, lib. i., 1: "Ac mihi quidem videntur huc omnia esse
+referenda iis qui pr&aelig;sunt aliis; ut ii, qui erunt eorum in imperio
+sint quam beatissimi, quod tibi et esse antiquissimum et ab initio
+fuisse, ut primum Asiam attigisti, constante fama atque omnium
+sermone celebratum est. Est autem non modo ejus, qui sociis et
+civibus, sed etiam ejus qui servis, qui mutis pecudibus pr&aelig;sit,
+eorum quibus pr&aelig;sit commodis utilitatique servire."</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_247_247" id="Footnote_247_247"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor_247_247"><span class="label">247</span></a> "H&aelig;c est
+una in toto imperio tuo difficultas."</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_248_248" id="Footnote_248_248"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor_248_248"><span class="label">248</span></a> Mommsen,
+book v., ca. 6.</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_249_249" id="Footnote_249_249"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor_249_249"><span class="label">249</span></a> Mommsen,
+vol. v., ca. vi.</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_250_250" id="Footnote_250_250"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor_250_250"><span class="label">250</span></a> Ad Att.,
+lib.ii., 7: "Atque h&aelig;c, sin velim existimes, non me abs te &#954;&#945;&#964;&#8048; &#964;&#8056; &#960;&#961;&#945;&#954;&#964;&#953;&#954;&#8056;&#957; qu&aelig;rere, quod gestiat animus aliquid
+agere in republica. Jam pridem gubernare me t&aelig;debat, etiam quum
+licebat."</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_251_251" id="Footnote_251_251"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor_251_251"><span class="label">251</span></a> Ad Att.,
+lib.ii., 8: "Scito Curionem adolescentem venisse ad me salutatum.
+Valde ejus sermo de Publio cum tuis litteris congruebat, ipse vero
+mirandum in modum Reges odisse superbos. Per&aelig;que narrabat incensam
+esse juventutem, neque ferre h&aelig;c posse." The "reges superbos" were
+C&aelig;sar and Pompey.</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_252_252" id="Footnote_252_252"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor_252_252"><span class="label">252</span></a> Ad Att.,
+lib.ii., 5: &#913;&#7984;&#948;&#8051;&#959;&#956;&#945;&#953; &#932;&#961;&#8182;&#945;&#962; &#954;&#945;&#8054; &#932;&#961;&#969;&#8049;&#948;&#945;&#962; &#7953;&#955;&#954;&#949;&#963;&#953;&#960;&#8051;&#960;&#955;&#959;&#965;&#962;.&mdash;Il., vi., 442. "I fear what Mrs. Grundy would
+say of me," is Mr. Tyrrell's homely version. Cicero's mind soared,
+I think, higher when he brought the words of Hector to his service
+than does the ordinary reference to our old familiar critic.</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_253_253" id="Footnote_253_253"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor_253_253"><span class="label">253</span></a> Quint.,
+xii., 1.</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_254_254" id="Footnote_254_254"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor_254_254"><span class="label">254</span></a> Enc.
+Britannica on Cicero.</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_255_255" id="Footnote_255_255"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor_255_255"><span class="label">255</span></a> Ad Att.,
+lib. ii., 9.</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_256_256" id="Footnote_256_256"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor_256_256"><span class="label">256</span></a> Ibid.:
+"Festive, mihi crede, et minore sonitu, quam putaram, orbis hic in
+republica est conversus." "Orbis hic," this round body of three is
+the Triumvirate.</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_257_257" id="Footnote_257_257"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor_257_257"><span class="label">257</span></a> We cannot
+but think of the threat Horace made, Sat., lib. ii., 1:</p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+<div class="stanza"><span class="i10">"At ille</span> <span class=
+"i0">Qui me commorit, melius non tangere! clamo,</span> <span
+class="i0">Flebit, et insignis tota cantabitur urbe."</span></div>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_258_258" id="Footnote_258_258"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor_258_258"><span class="label">258</span></a> Ad Att.,
+lib.ii., 11: "Da ponderosam aliquam epistolam."</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_259_259" id="Footnote_259_259"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor_259_259"><span class="label">259</span></a> Josephus,
+lib. xviii., ca. 5.</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_260_260" id="Footnote_260_260"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor_260_260"><span class="label">260</span></a> Ad Att.,
+lib. ii., 16.</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_261_261" id="Footnote_261_261"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor_261_261"><span class="label">261</span></a> Ad Att.,
+lib. ii., 18: "A C&aelig;sare valde liberaliter invitor in
+legationem illam, sibi ut sim legatus; atque etiam libera legatio
+voti causa datur."</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_262_262" id="Footnote_262_262"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor_262_262"><span class="label">262</span></a> De
+Legibus, lib.iii., ca.viii.: "Jam illud apertum prefecto est nihil
+esse turpius, quam quenquam legari nisi republica causa."</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_263_263" id="Footnote_263_263"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor_263_263"><span class="label">263</span></a> It may be
+seen from this how anxious C&aelig;sar was to secure his silence,
+and yet how determined not to screen him unless he could secure his
+silence.</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_264_264" id="Footnote_264_264"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor_264_264"><span class="label">264</span></a> Ad
+Quintum, lib. i., 2.</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_265_265" id="Footnote_265_265"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor_265_265"><span class="label">265</span></a> Of this
+last sentence I have taken a translation given by Mr. Tyrrell, who
+has introduced a special reading of the original which the sense
+seems to justify.</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_266_266" id="Footnote_266_266"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor_266_266"><span class="label">266</span></a> Macrobius,
+Saturnalia, lib.ii., ca.i.: We are told that Cicero had been called
+the consular buffoon. "And I," says Macrobius, "if it would not be
+too long, could relate how by his jokes he has brought off the most
+guilty criminals." Then he tells the story of Lucius Flaccus.</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_267_267" id="Footnote_267_267"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor_267_267"><span class="label">267</span></a> See the
+evidence of Asconius on this point, as to which Cicero's conduct
+has been much mistaken. We shall come to Milo's trial before
+long.</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_268_268" id="Footnote_268_268"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor_268_268"><span class="label">268</span></a> The
+statement is made by Mr. Tyrrell in his biographical introduction
+to the Epistles.</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_269_269" id="Footnote_269_269"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor_269_269"><span class="label">269</span></a> The 600
+years, or anni DC., is used to signify unlimited futurity.</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_270_270" id="Footnote_270_270"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor_270_270"><span class="label">270</span></a> Mommsen's
+History, book v., ca. v.</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_271_271" id="Footnote_271_271"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor_271_271"><span class="label">271</span></a> &#913;&#8016;&#964;&#8057;&#956;&#945;&#955;&#959;&#962; &#8032;&#957;&#959;&#956;&#8049;&#950;&#949;&#964;&#959; is the phrase of Dio Cassius.
+"Levissume transfuga" is the translation made by the author of the
+"Declamatio in Ciceronem." If I might venture on a slang phrase, I
+should say that &#945;&#8016;&#964;&#8057;&#956;&#945;&#955;&#959;&#962; was a man who "went off
+on his own hook." But no man was ever more loyal as a political
+adherent than Cicero.</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_272_272" id="Footnote_272_272"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor_272_272"><span class="label">272</span></a> Ad Att.,
+ii., 25.</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_273_273" id="Footnote_273_273"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor_273_273"><span class="label">273</span></a> We do not
+know when the marriage took place, or any of the circumstances; but
+we are aware that when Tullia came, in the following year, <span
+class="smcap">b.c.</span> 57, to meet her father at Brundisium, she
+was a widow.</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_274_274" id="Footnote_274_274"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor_274_274"><span class="label">274</span></a> Suetonius,
+Julius C&aelig;sar, xii.: "Subornavit etiam qui C. Rabirio
+perduellionis diem diceret."</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_275_275" id="Footnote_275_275"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor_275_275"><span class="label">275</span></a> "Qui civem
+Romanum indemnatum perimisset, ei aqua at igni interdiceretur."</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_276_276" id="Footnote_276_276"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor_276_276"><span class="label">276</span></a>Plutarch
+tells us of this sobriquet, but gives another reason for it,
+equally injurious to the lady's reputation.</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_277_277" id="Footnote_277_277"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor_277_277"><span class="label">277</span></a> Ad Att.,
+lib. iii., 15.</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_278_278" id="Footnote_278_278"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor_278_278"><span class="label">278</span></a> In
+Pisonem, vi.</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_279_279" id="Footnote_279_279"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor_279_279"><span class="label">279</span></a> Ad Att.,
+lib. x., 4.</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_280_280" id="Footnote_280_280"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor_280_280"><span class="label">280</span></a> We are
+told by Cornelius Nepos, in his life of Atticus, that when Cicero
+fled from his country Atticus advanced to him two hundred and fifty
+sesterces, or about &pound;2000. I doubt, however, whether the
+flight here referred to was not that early visit to Athens which
+Cicero was supposed to have made in his fear of Sulla.</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_281_281" id="Footnote_281_281"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor_281_281"><span class="label">281</span></a> Ad Fam.,
+lib. xiv., iv.: "Tullius to his Terentia, and to his young Tullia,
+and to his Cicero," meaning his boy.</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_282_282" id="Footnote_282_282"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor_282_282"><span class="label">282</span></a> Pro Domo
+Sua, xxiv.</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_283_283" id="Footnote_283_283"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor_283_283"><span class="label">283</span></a> Ad Quin.
+Fra., 1, 3.</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_284_284" id="Footnote_284_284"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor_284_284"><span class="label">284</span></a> The reader
+who wishes to understand with what anarchy the largest city in the
+world might still exist, should turn to chapter viii. of book v. of
+Mommsen's History.</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_285_285" id="Footnote_285_285"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor_285_285"><span class="label">285</span></a> Ad Att.,
+lib. iii., 12.</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_1_285" id="Footnote_1_285"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor_1_285"><span class="label">286</span></a> Horace, Epis.,
+lib. ii., 1.</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_2_286" id="Footnote_2_286"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor_2_286"><span class="label">287</span></a> Ad Att.,
+lib. i., 8.</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_3_287" id="Footnote_3_287"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor_3_287"><span class="label">288</span></a> Horace, Epis.,
+lib. ii., 11. The translation is Conington's.</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_4_288" id="Footnote_4_288"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor_4_288"><span class="label">289</span></a> Vell. Pat.,
+lib. i., xiii.</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_1_289" id="Footnote_1_289"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor_1_289"><span class="label">290</span></a> "Civile;" when
+Sulla, with Pompey under him, was fighting with young Marius and
+Cinna.</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_2_290" id="Footnote_2_290"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor_2_290"><span class="label">291</span></a> "Africanum;"
+when he had fought with Domitius, the son-in-law of Cinna, and with
+Hiarbas.</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_3_291" id="Footnote_3_291"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor_3_291"><span class="label">292</span></a>
+"Transalpinum;" during his march through Gaul into Spain.</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_4_292" id="Footnote_4_292"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor_4_292"><span class="label">293</span></a> "Hispaniense;"
+in which he conquered Sertorius.</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_5_293" id="Footnote_5_293"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor_5_293"><span class="label">294</span></a> "Servile;" the
+war with Spartacus, with the slaves and gladiators.</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_6_294" id="Footnote_6_294"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor_6_294"><span class="label">295</span></a> "Navale
+Bellum;" the war with the pirates.</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_1_295" id="Footnote_1_295"></a><a href=
+"#FNanchor_1_295"><span class="label">296</span></a>For the full
+understanding of this oft-quoted line the reader should make
+himself acquainted with Cato's march across Libya after the death
+of Pompey, as told by Lucan in his 9th book.</p>
+</div>
+
+
+
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+<h4>END OF VOLUME I.</h4>
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<pre>
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Life of Cicero, by Anthony Trollope
+
+*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LIFE OF CICERO ***
+
+***** This file should be named 8945-h.htm or 8945-h.zip *****
+This and all associated files of various formats will be found in:
+        http://www.gutenberg.org/8/9/4/8945/
+
+Produced by Ted Garvin, Marc D'Hooghe, Steve Whitaker, and
+the PG Online Distributed Proofreading Team
+
+
+Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions
+will be renamed.
+
+Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no
+one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation
+(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without
+permission and without paying copyright royalties.  Special rules,
+set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to
+copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to
+protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark.  Project
+Gutenberg is a registered trademark, and may not be used if you
+charge for the eBooks, unless you receive specific permission.  If you
+do not charge anything for copies of this eBook, complying with the
+rules is very easy.  You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose
+such as creation of derivative works, reports, performances and
+research.  They may be modified and printed and given away--you may do
+practically ANYTHING with public domain eBooks.  Redistribution is
+subject to the trademark license, especially commercial
+redistribution.
+
+
+
+*** START: FULL LICENSE ***
+
+THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE
+PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK
+
+To protect the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting the free
+distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work
+(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase "Project
+Gutenberg"), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full Project
+Gutenberg-tm License (available with this file or online at
+http://gutenberg.org/license).
+
+
+Section 1.  General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic works
+
+1.A.  By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to
+and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property
+(trademark/copyright) agreement.  If you do not agree to abide by all
+the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or destroy
+all copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in your possession.
+If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic work and you do not agree to be bound by the
+terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the person or
+entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph 1.E.8.
+
+1.B.  "Project Gutenberg" is a registered trademark.  It may only be
+used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who
+agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement.  There are a few
+things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works
+even without complying with the full terms of this agreement.  See
+paragraph 1.C below.  There are a lot of things you can do with Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic works if you follow the terms of this agreement
+and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works.  See paragraph 1.E below.
+
+1.C.  The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation ("the Foundation"
+or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection of Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic works.  Nearly all the individual works in the
+collection are in the public domain in the United States.  If an
+individual work is in the public domain in the United States and you are
+located in the United States, we do not claim a right to prevent you from
+copying, distributing, performing, displaying or creating derivative
+works based on the work as long as all references to Project Gutenberg
+are removed.  Of course, we hope that you will support the Project
+Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting free access to electronic works by
+freely sharing Project Gutenberg-tm works in compliance with the terms of
+this agreement for keeping the Project Gutenberg-tm name associated with
+the work.  You can easily comply with the terms of this agreement by
+keeping this work in the same format with its attached full Project
+Gutenberg-tm License when you share it without charge with others.
+
+1.D.  The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern
+what you can do with this work.  Copyright laws in most countries are in
+a constant state of change.  If you are outside the United States, check
+the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this agreement
+before downloading, copying, displaying, performing, distributing or
+creating derivative works based on this work or any other Project
+Gutenberg-tm work.  The Foundation makes no representations concerning
+the copyright status of any work in any country outside the United
+States.
+
+1.E.  Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg:
+
+1.E.1.  The following sentence, with active links to, or other immediate
+access to, the full Project Gutenberg-tm License must appear prominently
+whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg-tm work (any work on which the
+phrase "Project Gutenberg" appears, or with which the phrase "Project
+Gutenberg" is associated) is accessed, displayed, performed, viewed,
+copied or distributed:
+
+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
+
+1.E.2.  If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is derived
+from the public domain (does not contain a notice indicating that it is
+posted with permission of the copyright holder), the work can be copied
+and distributed to anyone in the United States without paying any fees
+or charges.  If you are redistributing or providing access to a work
+with the phrase "Project Gutenberg" associated with or appearing on the
+work, you must comply either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1
+through 1.E.7 or obtain permission for the use of the work and the
+Project Gutenberg-tm trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or
+1.E.9.
+
+1.E.3.  If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is posted
+with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution
+must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any additional
+terms imposed by the copyright holder.  Additional terms will be linked
+to the Project Gutenberg-tm License for all works posted with the
+permission of the copyright holder found at the beginning of this work.
+
+1.E.4.  Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this
+work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg-tm.
+
+1.E.5.  Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this
+electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without
+prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with
+active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project
+Gutenberg-tm License.
+
+1.E.6.  You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary,
+compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including any
+word processing or hypertext form.  However, if you provide access to or
+distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg-tm work in a format other than
+"Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other format used in the official version
+posted on the official Project Gutenberg-tm web site (www.gutenberg.org),
+you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense to the user, provide a
+copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means of obtaining a copy upon
+request, of the work in its original "Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other
+form.  Any alternate format must include the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1.
+
+1.E.7.  Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying,
+performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg-tm works
+unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9.
+
+1.E.8.  You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing
+access to or distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works provided
+that
+
+- You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from
+     the use of Project Gutenberg-tm works calculated using the method
+     you already use to calculate your applicable taxes.  The fee is
+     owed to the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark, but he
+     has agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the
+     Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation.  Royalty payments
+     must be paid within 60 days following each date on which you
+     prepare (or are legally required to prepare) your periodic tax
+     returns.  Royalty payments should be clearly marked as such and
+     sent to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the
+     address specified in Section 4, "Information about donations to
+     the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation."
+
+- You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies
+     you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he
+     does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+     License.  You must require such a user to return or
+     destroy all copies of the works possessed in a physical medium
+     and discontinue all use of and all access to other copies of
+     Project Gutenberg-tm works.
+
+- You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of any
+     money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the
+     electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days
+     of receipt of the work.
+
+- You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free
+     distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm works.
+
+1.E.9.  If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic work or group of works on different terms than are set
+forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing from
+both the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and Michael
+Hart, the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark.  Contact the
+Foundation as set forth in Section 3 below.
+
+1.F.
+
+1.F.1.  Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable
+effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread
+public domain works in creating the Project Gutenberg-tm
+collection.  Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may contain
+"Defects," such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate or
+corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other intellectual
+property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or other medium, a
+computer virus, or computer codes that damage or cannot be read by
+your equipment.
+
+1.F.2.  LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the "Right
+of Replacement or Refund" described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project
+Gutenberg-tm trademark, and any other party distributing a Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all
+liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal
+fees.  YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT
+LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE
+PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH F3.  YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE
+TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE
+LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR
+INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH
+DAMAGE.
+
+1.F.3.  LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a
+defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can
+receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a
+written explanation to the person you received the work from.  If you
+received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium with
+your written explanation.  The person or entity that provided you with
+the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in lieu of a
+refund.  If you received the work electronically, the person or entity
+providing it to you may choose to give you a second opportunity to
+receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund.  If the second copy
+is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing without further
+opportunities to fix the problem.
+
+1.F.4.  Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth
+in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you 'AS-IS' WITH NO OTHER
+WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO
+WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTIBILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE.
+
+1.F.5.  Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied
+warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of damages.
+If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement violates the
+law of the state applicable to this agreement, the agreement shall be
+interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or limitation permitted by
+the applicable state law.  The invalidity or unenforceability of any
+provision of this agreement shall not void the remaining provisions.
+
+1.F.6.  INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the
+trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone
+providing copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in accordance
+with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the production,
+promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works,
+harmless from all liability, costs and expenses, including legal fees,
+that arise directly or indirectly from any of the following which you do
+or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this or any Project Gutenberg-tm
+work, (b) alteration, modification, or additions or deletions to any
+Project Gutenberg-tm work, and (c) any Defect you cause.
+
+
+Section  2.  Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg-tm
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm is synonymous with the free distribution of
+electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of computers
+including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers.  It exists
+because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations from
+people in all walks of life.
+
+Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the
+assistance they need, are critical to reaching Project Gutenberg-tm's
+goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg-tm collection will
+remain freely available for generations to come.  In 2001, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure
+and permanent future for Project Gutenberg-tm and future generations.
+To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation
+and how your efforts and donations can help, see Sections 3 and 4
+and the Foundation web page at http://www.pglaf.org.
+
+
+Section 3.  Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive
+Foundation
+
+The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non profit
+501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the
+state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal
+Revenue Service.  The Foundation's EIN or federal tax identification
+number is 64-6221541.  Its 501(c)(3) letter is posted at
+http://pglaf.org/fundraising.  Contributions to the Project Gutenberg
+Literary Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent
+permitted by U.S. federal laws and your state's laws.
+
+The Foundation's principal office is located at 4557 Melan Dr. S.
+Fairbanks, AK, 99712., but its volunteers and employees are scattered
+throughout numerous locations.  Its business office is located at
+809 North 1500 West, Salt Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887, email
+business@pglaf.org.  Email contact links and up to date contact
+information can be found at the Foundation's web site and official
+page at http://pglaf.org
+
+For additional contact information:
+     Dr. Gregory B. Newby
+     Chief Executive and Director
+     gbnewby@pglaf.org
+
+
+Section 4.  Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg
+Literary Archive Foundation
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm depends upon and cannot survive without wide
+spread public support and donations to carry out its mission of
+increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be
+freely distributed in machine readable form accessible by the widest
+array of equipment including outdated equipment.  Many small donations
+($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt
+status with the IRS.
+
+The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating
+charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United
+States.  Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a
+considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up
+with these requirements.  We do not solicit donations in locations
+where we have not received written confirmation of compliance.  To
+SEND DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any
+particular state visit http://pglaf.org
+
+While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we
+have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition
+against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who
+approach us with offers to donate.
+
+International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make
+any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from
+outside the United States.  U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff.
+
+Please check the Project Gutenberg Web pages for current donation
+methods and addresses.  Donations are accepted in a number of other
+ways including checks, online payments and credit card donations.
+To donate, please visit: http://pglaf.org/donate
+
+
+Section 5.  General Information About Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works.
+
+Professor Michael S. Hart is the originator of the Project Gutenberg-tm
+concept of a library of electronic works that could be freely shared
+with anyone.  For thirty years, he produced and distributed Project
+Gutenberg-tm eBooks with only a loose network of volunteer support.
+
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks are often created from several printed
+editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the U.S.
+unless a copyright notice is included.  Thus, we do not necessarily
+keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition.
+
+
+Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search facility:
+
+     http://www.gutenberg.org
+
+This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm,
+including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary
+Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to
+subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks.
+
+
+</pre>
+
+</body>
+</html>
+
diff --git a/8945.txt b/8945.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..169717c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/8945.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,11678 @@
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Life of Cicero, by Anthony Trollope
+
+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: Life of Cicero
+       Volume One
+
+Author: Anthony Trollope
+
+Release Date: August 28, 2003 [EBook #8945]
+Most recently updated: April 18, 2011
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LIFE OF CICERO ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Ted Garvin, Marc D'Hooghe, Steve Whitaker, and
+the PG Online Distributed Proofreading Team
+
+
+
+
+
+
+THE
+
+LIFE OF CICERO
+
+BY
+
+ANTHONY TROLLOPE
+
+_IN TWO VOLUMES_
+
+VOL. I.
+
+NEW YORK
+HARPER & BROTHERS, FRANKLIN SQUARE
+1881
+
+
+
+
+ CONTENTS OF VOLUME I.
+
+
+  CHAPTER I.
+                                         PAGE
+  INTRODUCTION.                             7
+
+
+  CHAPTER II.
+
+  HIS EDUCATION.                           40
+
+
+  CHAPTER III.
+
+  THE CONDITION OF ROME.                   62
+
+
+  CHAPTER IV.
+
+  HIS EARLY PLEADINGS.--SEXTUS ROSCIUS
+    AMERINUS.--HIS INCOME.                 80
+
+
+  CHAPTER V.
+
+  CICERO AS QUAESTOR.                      107
+
+
+  CHAPTER VI.
+
+  VERRES.                                 124
+
+
+  CHAPTER VII.
+
+  CICERO AS AEDILE AND PRAETOR.             162
+
+
+  CHAPTER VIII.
+
+  CICERO AS CONSUL.                       184
+
+
+  CHAPTER IX.
+
+  CATILINE.                               206
+
+
+  CHAPTER X.
+
+  CICERO AFTER HIS CONSULSHIP.            240
+
+
+  CHAPTER XI.
+
+  THE TRIUMVIRATE.                        264
+
+
+  CHAPTER XII.
+
+  HIS EXILE.                              297
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+  APPENDICES.
+
+  APPENDIX A.                             335
+
+  APPENDIX B.                             340
+
+  APPENDIX C.                             242
+
+  APPENDIX D.                             345
+
+  APPENDIX E.                             347
+
+
+
+
+THE LIFE OF CICERO.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+_INTRODUCTION._
+
+
+I am conscious of a certain audacity in thus attempting to give a
+further life of Cicero which I feel I may probably fail in justifying by
+any new information; and on this account the enterprise, though it has
+been long considered, has been postponed, so that it may be left for
+those who come after me to burn or publish, as they may think proper;
+or, should it appear during my life, I may have become callous, through
+age, to criticism.
+
+The project of my work was anterior to the life by Mr. Forsyth, and was
+first suggested to me as I was reviewing the earlier volumes of Dean
+Merivale's History of the Romans under the Empire. In an article on the
+Dean's work, prepared for one of the magazines of the day, I inserted an
+apology for the character of Cicero, which was found to be too long as
+an episode, and was discarded by me, not without regret. From that time
+the subject has grown in my estimation till it has reached its present
+dimensions.
+
+I may say with truth that my book has sprung from love of the man, and
+from a heartfelt admiration of his virtues and his conduct, as well as
+of his gifts. I must acknowledge that in discussing his character with
+men of letters, as I have been prone to do, I have found none quite to
+agree with me. His intellect they have admitted, and his industry; but
+his patriotism they have doubted, his sincerity they have disputed, and
+his courage they have denied. It might have become me to have been
+silenced by their verdict; but I have rather been instigated to appeal
+to the public, and to ask them to agree with me against my friends. It
+is not only that Cicero has touched all matters of interest to men, and
+has given a new grace to all that he has touched; that as an orator, a
+rhetorician, an essayist, and a correspondent he was supreme; that as a
+statesman he was honest, as an advocate fearless, and as a governor
+pure; that he was a man whose intellectual part always dominated that of
+the body; that in taste he was excellent, in thought both correct and
+enterprising, and that in language he was perfect. All this has been
+already so said of him by other biographers. Plutarch, who is as
+familiar to us as though he had been English, and Middleton, who
+thoroughly loved his subject, and latterly Mr. Forsyth, who has
+struggled to be honest to him, might have sufficed as telling us so much
+as that. But there was a humanity in Cicero, a something almost of
+Christianity, a stepping forward out of the dead intellectualities of
+Roman life into moral perceptions, into natural affections, into
+domesticity, philanthropy, and conscious discharge of duty, which do not
+seem to have been as yet fully appreciated. To have loved his neighbor
+as himself before the teaching of Christ was much for a man to achieve;
+and that he did this is what I claim for Cicero, and hope to bring home
+to the minds of those who can find time for reading yet another added to
+the constantly increasing volumes about Roman times.
+
+It has been the habit of some latter writers, who have left to Cicero
+his literary honors, to rob him of those which had been accorded to him
+as a politician. Macaulay, expressing his surprise at the fecundity of
+Cicero, and then passing on to the praise of the Philippics as
+senatorial speeches, says of him that he seems to have been at the head
+of the "minds of the second order." We cannot judge of the
+classification without knowing how many of the great men of the world
+are to be included in the first rank. But Macaulay probably intended to
+express an opinion that Cicero was inferior because he himself had never
+dominated others as Marius had done, and Sylla, and Pompey, and Caesar,
+and Augustus. But what if Cicero was ambitious for the good of others,
+while these men had desired power only for themselves?
+
+Dean Merivale says that Cicero was "discreet and decorous," as with a
+similar sneer another clergyman, Sydney Smith, ridiculed a Tory
+prime-minister because he was true to his wife. There is nothing so open
+to the bitterness of a little joke as those humble virtues by which no
+glitter can be gained, but only the happiness of many preserved. And the
+Dean declares that Cicero himself was not, except once or twice, and for
+a "moment only, a real power in the State." Men who usurped authority,
+such as those I have named, were the "real powers," and it was in
+opposition to such usurpation that Cicero was always urgent. Mr.
+Forsyth, who, as I have said, strives to be impartial, tells us that
+"the chief fault of Cicero's moral character was a want of sincerity."
+Absence of sincerity there was not. Deficiency of sincerity there was.
+Who among men has been free from such blame since history and the lives
+of men were first written? It will be my object to show that though less
+than godlike in that gift, by comparison with other men around him he
+was sincere, as he was also self-denying; which, if the two virtues be
+well examined, will indicate the same phase of character.
+
+But of all modern writers Mr. Froude has been the hardest to Cicero. His
+sketch of the life of Caesar is one prolonged censure on that of Cicero.
+Our historian, with all that glory of language for which he is so
+remarkable, has covered the poor orator with obloquy. There is no period
+in Cicero's life so touching, I think, as that during which he was
+hesitating whether, in the service of the Republic, it did or did not
+behoove him to join Pompey before the battle of Pharsalia. At this time
+he wrote to his friend Atticus various letters full of agonizing doubts
+as to what was demanded from him by his duty to his country, by his
+friendship for Pompey, by loyalty to his party, and by his own dignity.
+As to a passage in one of those, Mr. Froude says "that Cicero had lately
+spoken of Caesar's continuance in life as a disgrace to the State." "It
+has been seen also that he had long thought of assassination as the
+readiest means of ending it,"[1] says Mr. Froude. The "It has been seen"
+refers to a statement made a few pages earlier, in which he translates
+certain words written by Cicero to Atticus.[2] "He considered it a
+disgrace to them that Caesar was alive." That is his translation; and in
+his indignation he puts other words, as it were, into the mouth of his
+literary brother of two thousand years before. "Why did not somebody
+kill him?" The Latin words themselves are added in a note, "Cum vivere
+ipsum turpe sit nobis."[3] Hot indignation has so carried the translator
+away that he has missed the very sense of Cicero's language. "When even
+to draw the breath of life at such a time is a disgrace to us!" That is
+what Cicero meant. Mr. Froude in a preceding passage gives us another
+passage from a letter to Atticus,[4] "Caesar was mortal."[5] So much is
+an intended translation. Then Mr. Froude tells us how Cicero had "hailed
+Caesar's eventual murder with rapture;" and goes on to say, "We read the
+words with sorrow and yet with pity." But Cicero had never dreamed of
+Caesar's murder. The words of the passage are as follows: "Hunc primum
+mortalem esse, deinde etiam multis modis extingui posse cogitabam." "I
+bethought myself in the first place that this man was mortal, and then
+that there were a hundred ways in which he might be put on one side."
+All the latter authorities have, I believe, supposed the "hunc" or "this
+man" to be Pompey. I should say that this was proved by the gist of the
+whole letter--one of the most interesting that was ever written, as
+telling the workings of a great man's mind at a peculiar crisis of his
+life--did I not know that former learned editors have supposed Caesar to
+have been meant. But whether Caesar or Pompey, there is nothing in it to
+do with murder. It is a question--Cicero is saying to his friend--of the
+stability of the Republic. When a matter so great is considered, how is
+a man to trouble himself as to an individual who may die any day, or
+cease from any accident to be of weight? Cicero was speaking of the
+effect of this or that step on his own part. Am I, he says, for the sake
+of Pompey to bring down hordes of barbarians on my own country,
+sacrificing the Republic for the sake of a friend who is here to-day and
+may be gone to-morrow? Or for the sake of an enemy, if the reader thinks
+that the "hunc" refers to Caesar. The argument is the same. Am I to
+consider an individual when the Republic is at stake? Mr. Froude tells
+us that he reads "the words with sorrow and yet with pity." So would
+every one, I think, sympathizing with the patriot's doubts as to his
+leader, as to his party, and as to his country. Mr. Froude does so
+because he gathers from them that Cicero is premeditating the murder of
+Caesar!
+
+It is natural that a man should be judged out of his own mouth. A man
+who speaks much, and so speaks that his words shall be listened to and
+read, will be so judged. But it is not too much to demand that when a
+man's character is at stake his own words shall be thoroughly sifted
+before they are used against him.
+
+The writer of the biographical notice in the Encyclopedia Britannica on
+Cicero, sends down to posterity a statement that in the time of the
+first triumvirate, when our hero was withstanding the machinations of
+Caesar and Pompey against the liberties of Rome, he was open to be
+bought. The augurship would have bought him. "So pitiful," says the
+biographer, "was the bribe to which he would have sacrificed his honor,
+his opinions, and the commonwealth!" With no more sententious language
+was the character of a great man ever offered up to public scorn. And on
+what evidence? We should have known nothing of the bribe and the
+corruption but for a few playful words in a letter from Cicero himself
+to Atticus. He is writing from one of his villas to his friend in Rome,
+and asks for the news of the day: Who are to be the new consuls? Who is
+to have the vacant augurship? Ah, says he, they might have caught even
+me with that bait;[6] as he said on another occasion that he was so much
+in debt as to be fit for a rebel; and again, as I shall have to explain
+just now, that he was like to be called in question under the Cincian
+law because of a present of books! This was just at the point of his
+life when he was declining all offers of public service--of public
+service for which his soul longed--because they were made to him by
+Caesar. It was then that the "Vigintiviratus" was refused, which
+Quintilian mentions to his honor. It was then that he refused to be
+Caesar's lieutenant. It was then that he might have been fourth with
+Caesar, and Pompey, and Crassus, had he not felt himself bound not to
+serve against the Republic. And yet the biographer does not hesitate to
+load him with infamy because of a playful word in a letter half jocose
+and half pathetic to his friend. If a man's deeds be always honest,
+surely he should not be accused of dishonesty on the strength of some
+light word spoken in the confidence of familiar intercourse. The light
+words are taken to be grave because they meet the modern critic's eye
+clothed in the majesty of a dead language; and thus it comes to pass
+that their very meaning is misunderstood.
+
+My friend Mr. Collins speaks, in his charming little volume on Cicero,
+of "quiet evasions" of the Cincian law,[7] and tells us that we are
+taught by Cicero's letters not to trust Cicero's words when he was in a
+boasting vein. What has the one thing to do with the other? He names no
+quiet evasions. Mr. Collins makes a surmise, by which the character of
+Cicero for honesty is impugned--without evidence. The anonymous
+biographer altogether misinterprets Cicero. Mr. Froude charges Cicero
+with anticipation of murder, grounding his charge on words which he has
+not taken the trouble to understand. Cicero is accused on the strength
+of his own private letters. It is because we have not the private
+letters of other persons that they are not so accused. The courtesies of
+the world exact, I will not say demand, certain deviations from
+straightforward expression; and these are made most often in private
+conversations and in private correspondence. Cicero complies with the
+ways of the world; but his epistles are no longer private, and he is
+therefore subjected to charges of falsehood. It is because Cicero's
+letters, written altogether for privacy, have been found worthy to be
+made public that such accusations have been made. When the injustice of
+these critics strikes me, I almost wish that Cicero's letters had not
+been preserved.
+
+As I have referred to the evidence of those who have, in these latter
+days, spoken against Cicero, I will endeavor to place before the
+reader the testimony of his character which was given by writers,
+chiefly of his own nation, who dealt with his name for the hundred and
+fifty years after his death--from the time of Augustus down to that
+of Adrian--a period much given to literature, in which the name of a
+politician and a man of literature would assuredly be much discussed.
+Readers will see in what language he was spoken of by those who came
+after him. I trust they will believe that if I knew of testimony on
+the other side, of records adverse to the man, I would give them. The
+first passage to which I will allude does not bear Cicero's name; and
+it may be that I am wrong in assuming honor to Cicero from a passage
+in poetry, itself so famous, in which no direct allusion is made to
+himself. But the idea that Virgil in the following lines refers to the
+manner in which Cicero soothed the multitude who rose to destroy the
+theatre when the knights took their front seats in accordance with
+Otho's law, does not originate with me. I give the lines as translated
+by Dryden, with the original in a note.[8]
+
+   "As when in tumults rise the ignoble crowd,
+    Mad are their motions, and their tongues are loud;
+    And stones and brands in rattling volleys fly,
+    And all the rustic arms that fury can supply;
+    If then some grave and pious man appear,
+    They hush their noise, and lend a listening ear;
+    He soothes with sober words their angry mood,
+    And quenches their innate desire of blood."
+
+This, if it be not intended for a portrait of Cicero on that occasion,
+exactly describes his position and his success. We have a fragment of
+Cornelius Nepos, the biographer of the Augustan age, declaring that at
+Cicero's death men had to doubt whether literature or the Republic had
+lost the most.[9] Livy declared of him only, that he would be the best
+writer of Latin prose who was most like to Cicero.[10] Velleius
+Paterculus, who wrote in the time of Tiberius, speaks of Cicero's
+achievements with the highest honor. "At this period," he says, "lived
+Marcus Cicero, who owed everything to himself; a man of altogether a new
+family, as distinguished for ability as he was for the purity of his
+life."[11] Valerius Maximus quotes him as an example of a forgiving
+character.[12] Perhaps the warmest praise ever given to him came from
+the pen of Pliny the elder, from whose address to the memory of Cicero I
+will quote only a few words, as I shall refer to it more at length when
+speaking of his consulship. "Hail thou," says Pliny, "who first among
+men was called the father of your country."[13] Martial, in one of his
+distichs, tells the traveller that if he have but a book of Cicero's
+writing he may fancy that he is travelling with Cicero himself.[14]
+Lucan, in his bombastic verse, declares how Cicero dared to speak of
+peace in the camp of Pharsalia. The reader may think that Cicero should
+have said nothing of the kind, but Lucan mentions him with all
+honor.[15] Not Tacitus, as I think, but some author whose essay De
+Oratoribus was written about the time of Tacitus, and whose work has
+come to us with the name of Tacitus, has told us of Cicero that he was a
+master of logic, of ethics, and of physical science.[16] Everybody
+remembers the passage in Juvenal,
+
+                               "Sed Roma parentem
+    Roma patrem patriae Ciceronem libera dixit."
+
+"Rome, even when she was free, declared him to be the father of his
+country."[17] Even Plutarch, who generally seems to have a touch of
+jealousy when speaking of Cicero, declares that he verified the
+prediction of Plato, "That every State would be delivered from its
+calamities whenever power should fortunately unite with wisdom and
+justice in one person."[18] The praises of Quintilian as to the man are
+so mixed with the admiration of the critic for the hero of letters, that
+I would have omitted to mention them here were it not that they will
+help to declare what was the general opinion as to Cicero at the time in
+which it was written. He has been speaking of Demosthenes,[19] and then
+goes on: "Nor in regard to Cicero do I see that he ever failed in the
+duty of a good citizen. There is in evidence of this the splendor of his
+consulship, the rare integrity of his provincial administration, his
+refusal of office under Caesar,[20] the firmness of his mind on the civil
+wars, giving way neither to hope nor fear, though these sorrows came
+heavily on him in his old age. On all these occasions he did the best he
+could for the Republic." Florus, who wrote after the twelve Caesars, in
+the time of Trajan and of Adrian, whose rapid summary of Roman events
+can hardly be called a history, tells us, in a few words, how Catiline's
+conspiracy was crushed by the authority of Cicero and Cato in opposition
+to that of Caesar.[21] Then, when he has passed in a few short chapters
+over all the intervening history of the Roman Empire, he relates, in
+pathetic words, the death of Cicero. "It was the custom in Rome to put
+up on the rostra the heads of those who had been slain; but now the city
+was not able to restrain its tears when the head of Cicero was seen
+there, upon the spot from which the citizens had so often listened to
+his words."[22] Such is the testimony given to this man by the writers
+who may be supposed to have known most of him as having been nearest to
+his time. They all wrote after him. Sallust, who was certainly his
+enemy, wrote of him in his lifetime, but never wrote in his dispraise.
+It is evident that public opinion forbade him to do so. Sallust is never
+warm in Cicero's praise, as were those subsequent authors whose words I
+have quoted, and has been made subject to reproach for envy, for having
+passed too lightly over Cicero's doings and words in his account of
+Catiline's conspiracy; but what he did say was to Cicero's credit. Men
+had heard of the danger, and therefore, says Sallust,[23] "They
+conceived the idea of intrusting the consulship to Cicero. For before
+that the nobles were envious, and thought that the consulship would be
+polluted if it were conferred on a _novus homo_, however distinguished.
+But when danger came, envy and pride had to give way." He afterward
+declares that Cicero made a speech against Catiline most brilliant, and
+at the same time useful to the Republic. This was lukewarm praise, but
+coming from Sallust, who would have censured if he could, it is as
+eloquent as any eulogy. There is extant a passage attributed to Sallust
+full of virulent abuse of Cicero, but no one now imagines that Sallust
+wrote it. It is called the Declamation of Sallust against Cicero, and
+bears intrinsic evidence that it was written in after years. It suited
+some one to forge pretended invectives between Sallust and Cicero, and
+is chiefly noteworthy here because it gives to Dio Cassius a foundation
+for the hardest of hard words he said against the orator.[24]
+
+Dio Cassius was a Greek who wrote in the reign of Alexander Severus,
+more than two centuries and a half after the death of Cicero, and he no
+doubt speaks evil enough of our hero. What was the special cause of
+jealousy on his part cannot probably be now known, but the nature of his
+hatred may be gathered from the passage in the note, which is so
+foul-mouthed that it can be only inserted under the veil of his own
+language.[25] Among other absurdities Dio Cassius says of Cicero that in
+his latter days he put away a gay young wife, forty years younger than
+himself, in order that he might enjoy without disturbance the company of
+another lady who was nearly as much older than himself as his wife was
+younger.
+
+Now I ask, having brought forward so strong a testimony, not, I will
+say, as to the character of the man, but of the estimation in which he
+was held by those who came shortly after him in his own country; having
+shown, as I profess that I have shown, that his name was always treated
+with singular dignity and respect, not only by the lovers of the old
+Republic but by the minions of the Empire; having found that no charge
+was ever made against him either for insincerity or cowardice or
+dishonesty by those who dealt commonly with his name, am I not justified
+in saying that they who have in later days accused him should have shown
+their authority? Their authority they have always found in his own
+words. It is on his own evidence against himself that they have
+depended--on his own evidence, or occasionally on their own surmises.
+When we are told of his cowardice, because those human vacillations of
+his, humane as well as human, have been laid bare to us as they came
+quivering out of his bosom on to his fingers! He is a coward to the
+critics because they have written without giving themselves time to feel
+the true meaning of his own words. If we had only known his acts and not
+his words--how he stood up against the judges at the trial of Verres,
+with what courage he encountered the responsibility of his doings at the
+time of Catiline, how he joined Pompey in Macedonia from a sense of
+sheer duty, how he defied Antony when to defy Antony was probable
+death--then we should not call him a coward! It is out of his own mouth
+that he is condemned. Then surely his words should be understood. Queen
+Christina says of him, in one of her maxims, that "Cicero was the only
+coward that was capable of great actions." The Queen of Sweden, whose
+sentences are never worth very much, has known her history well enough
+to have learned that Cicero's acts were noble, but has not understood
+the meaning of words sufficiently to extract from Cicero's own
+expressions their true bearing. The bravest of us all, if he is in high
+place, has to doubt much before he can know what true courage will
+demand of him; and these doubts the man of words will express, if there
+be given to him an _alter ego_ such as Cicero had in Atticus.
+
+In reference to the biography of Mr Forsyth I must, in justice both to
+him and to Cicero, quote one passage from the work: "Let those who, like
+De Quincey,[26] Mommsen, and others, speak disparagingly of Cicero, and
+are so lavish in praise of Caesar, recollect that Caesar never was
+troubled by a conscience." Here it is that we find that advance almost
+to Christianity of which I have spoken, and that superiority of mind
+being which makes Cicero the most fit to be loved of all the Romans.
+
+It is hard for a man, even in regard to his own private purposes, to
+analyze the meaning of a conscience, if he put out of question all
+belief in a future life. Why should a man do right if it be not for a
+reward here or hereafter? Why should anything be right--or wrong? The
+Stoics tried to get over the difficulty by declaring that if a man could
+conquer all his personal desires he would become, by doing so, happy,
+and would therefore have achieved the only end at which a man can
+rationally aim. The school had many scholars, but probably never a
+believer. The normal Greek or Roman might be deterred by the law, which
+means fear of punishment, or by the opinion of his neighbors, which
+means ignominy. He might recognize the fact that comfort would combine
+itself with innocence, or disease and want with lust and greed. In this
+there was little need of a conscience--hardly, perhaps, room for it. But
+when ambition came, with all the opportunities that chance, audacity,
+and intellect would give--as it did to Sylla, to Caesar, and to
+Augustus--then there was nothing to restrain the men. There was to such
+a man no right but his power, no wrong but opposition to it. His cruelty
+or his clemency might be more or less, as his conviction of the utility
+of this or that other weapon for dominating men might be strong with
+him. Or there might be some variation in the flowing of the blood about
+his heart which might make a massacre of citizens a pleasing diversion
+or a painful process to him; but there was no conscience. With the man
+of whom we are about to speak conscience was strong. In his sometimes
+doubtful wanderings after political wisdom--in those mental mazes which
+have been called insincerity--we shall see him, if we look well into his
+doings, struggling to find whether, in searching for what was his duty,
+he should go to this side or to that. Might he best hope a return to
+that state of things which he thought good for his country by adhering
+to Caesar or to Pompey? We see the workings of his conscience, and, as we
+remember that Scipio's dream of his, we feel sure that he had, in truth,
+within him a recognition of a future life.
+
+In discussing the character of a man, there is no course of error so
+fertile as the drawing of a hard and fast line. We are attracted by
+salient points, and, seeing them clearly, we jump to conclusions, as
+though there were a light-house on every point by which the nature of
+the coast would certainly be shown to us. And so it will, if we accept
+the light only for so much of the shore as it illumines. But to say that
+a man is insincere because he has vacillated in this or the other
+difficulty, that he is a coward because he has feared certain dangers,
+that he is dishonest because he has swerved, that he is a liar because
+an untrue word has been traced to him, is to suppose that you know all
+the coast because one jutting headland has been defined to you. He who
+so expresses himself on a man's character is either ignorant of human
+nature, or is in search of stones with which to pelt his enemy. "He has
+lied! He has lied!" How often in our own political contests do we hear
+the cry with a note of triumph! And if he have, how often has he told
+the truth? And if he have, how many are entitled by pure innocence in
+that matter to throw a stone at him? And if he have, do we not know how
+lies will come to the tongue of a man without thought of lying? In his
+stoutest efforts after the truth a man may so express himself that when
+afterward he is driven to compare his recent and his former words, he
+shall hardly be able to say even to himself that he has not lied. It is
+by the tenor of a man's whole life that we must judge him, whether he be
+a liar or no.
+
+To expect a man to be the same at sixty as he was at thirty, is to
+suppose that the sun at noon shall be graced with the colors which adorn
+its setting. And there are men whose intellects are set on so fine a
+pivot that a variation in the breeze of the moment, which coarser minds
+shall not feel, will carry them round with a rapidity which baffles the
+common eye. The man who saw his duty clearly on this side in the morning
+shall, before the evening come, recognize it on the other; and then
+again, and again, and yet again the vane shall go round. It may be that
+an instrument shall be too fine for our daily uses. We do not want a
+clock to strike the minutes, or a glass to tell the momentary changes in
+the atmosphere. It may be found that for the work of the world, the
+coarse work--and no work is so coarse, though none is so important, as
+that which falls commonly into the hands of statesmen--instruments
+strong in texture, and by reason of their rudeness not liable to sudden
+impressions, may be the best. That it is which we mean when we declare
+that a scrupulous man is impractical in politics. But the same man may,
+at various periods of his life, and on various days at the same period,
+be scrupulous and unscrupulous, impractical and practical, as the
+circumstances of the occasion may affect him. At one moment the rule of
+simple honesty will prevail with him. "Fiat justitia, ruat c[oe]lum."
+"Si fractus illabatur orbis Impavidum ferient ruinae." At another he will
+see the necessity of a compromise for the good of the many. He will tell
+himself that if the best cannot be done, he must content himself with
+the next best. He must shake hands with the imperfect, as the best way
+of lifting himself up from a bad way toward a better. In obedience to
+his very conscience he will temporize, and, finding no other way of
+achieving good, will do even evil that good may come of it. "Rem si
+possis recte; si non, quocunque modo rem." In judging of such a
+character as this, a hard and fast line will certainly lead us astray.
+In judging of Cicero, such a hard and fast line has too generally been
+used. He was a man singularly sensitive to all influences. It must be
+admitted that he was a vane, turning on a pivot finer than those on
+which statesmen have generally been made to work. He had none of the
+fixed purpose of Caesar, or the unflinching principle of Cato. They were
+men cased in brass, whose feelings nothing could hurt. They suffered
+from none of those inward flutterings of the heart, doubtful
+aspirations, human longings, sharp sympathies, dreams of something
+better than this world, fears of something worse, which make Cicero so
+like a well-bred, polished gentleman of the present day. It is because
+he has so little like a Roman that he is of all the Romans the most
+attractive.
+
+Still there may be doubt whether, with all the intricacies of his
+character, his career was such as to justify a further biography at this
+distance of time. "What's Hecuba to him, or he to Hecuba?" asks Hamlet,
+when he finds himself stirred by the passion thrown into the bare
+recital of an old story by an itinerant player. What is Cicero to us of
+the nineteenth century that we should care so much for him as to read
+yet another book? Nevertheless, Hamlet was moved because the tale was
+well told. There is matter in the earnestness, the pleasantness, the
+patriotism, and the tragedy of the man's life to move a reader still--if
+the story could only be written of him as it is felt! The difficulty
+lies in that, and not in the nature of the story.
+
+The period of Cicero's life was the very turning-point of civilization
+and government in the history of the world. At that period of time the
+world, as we know it, was Rome. Greece had sunk. The Macedonian Empire
+had been destroyed. The kingdoms of the East--whether conquered, or even
+when conquering, as was Parthia for awhile--were barbaric, outside the
+circle of cultivation, and to be brought into it only by the arms and
+influence of Rome. During Caesar's career Gaul was conquered; and
+Britain, with what was known of Germany, supposed to be partly
+conquered. The subjugation of Africa and Spain was all but completed.
+Letters, too, had been or were being introduced. Cicero's use of
+language was so perfect that it seems to us to have been almost
+necessarily the result of a long established art of Latin literature.
+But, in truth, he is the earliest of the prose writers of his country
+with whose works we are familiar. Excepting Varro, who was born but ten
+years before him, no earlier Latin prose writer has left more than a
+name to us; and the one work by which Varro is at all known, the De Re
+Rustica, was written after Cicero's death. Lucretius, whose language we
+regard as almost archaic, so unlike is it to that of Virgil or Horace,
+was born eight years after Cicero. In a great degree Cicero formed the
+Latin language--or produced that manipulation of it which has made it so
+graceful in prose, and so powerful a vehicle of thought. That which he
+took from any Latin writer he took from Terence.
+
+And it was then, just then, that there arose in Rome that unpremeditated
+change in its form of government which resulted in the self-assumed
+dictatorship of Caesar, and the usurpation of the Empire by Augustus. The
+old Rome had had kings. Then the name and the power became odious--the
+name to all the citizens, no doubt, but the power simply to the
+nobility, who grudged the supremacy of one man. The kings were
+abolished, and an oligarchy was established under the name of a
+Republic, with its annual magistrates--at first its two Consuls, then
+its Praetors and others, and occasionally a Dictator, as some current
+event demanded a concentration of temporary power in a single hand for a
+certain purpose. The Republic was no republic, as we understand the
+word; nor did it ever become so, though their was always going on a
+perpetual struggle to transfer the power from the nobles to the people,
+in which something was always being given or pretended to be given to
+the outside class. But so little was as yet understood of liberty that,
+as each plebeian made his way up into high place and became one of the
+magistrates of the State, he became also one of the oligarchical
+faction. There was a continued contest, with a certain amount of good
+faith on each side, on behalf of the so-called Republic--but still a
+contest for power. This became so continued that a foreign war was at
+times regarded as a blessing, because it concentrated the energies of
+the State, which had been split and used by the two sections--by each
+against the other. It is probably the case that the invasion of the
+Gauls in earlier days, and, later on, the second Punic war, threatening
+as they were in their incidents to the power of Rome, provided the
+Republic with that vitality which kept it so long in existence. Then
+came Marius, dominant on one side as a tribune of the people, and Sylla,
+as aristocrat on the other, and the civil wars between them, in which,
+as one prevailed or the other, Rome was mastered. How Marius died, and
+Sylla reigned for three bloody, fatal years, is outside the scope of our
+purpose--except in this, that Cicero saw Sylla's proscriptions, and made
+his first essay into public life hot with anger at the Dictator's
+tyranny.
+
+It occurs to us as we read the history of Rome, beginning with the early
+Consuls and going to the death of Caesar and of Cicero, and the
+accomplished despotism of Augustus, that the Republic could not have
+been saved by any efforts, and was in truth not worth the saving. We are
+apt to think, judging from our own idea of liberty, that there was so
+much of tyranny, so little of real freedom in the Roman form of
+government, that it was not good enough to deserve our sympathies. But
+it had been successful. It had made a great people, and had produced a
+wide-spread civilization. Roman citizenship was to those outside the one
+thing the most worthy to be obtained. That career which led the great
+Romans up from the state of Quaestor to the AEdile's, Praetor's, and
+Consul's chair, and thence to the rich reward of provincial government,
+was held to be the highest then open to the ambition of man. The Kings
+of Greece, and of the East, and of Africa were supposed to be inferior
+in their very rank to a Roman Proconsul, and this greatness was carried
+on with a semblance of liberty, and was compatible with a belief in the
+majesty of the Roman citizen. When Cicero began his work, Consuls,
+Praetors, AEdiles, and Quaestors were still chosen by the votes of the
+citizens. There was bribery, no doubt, and intimidation, and a resort to
+those dirty arts of canvassing with which we English have been so
+familiar; but in Cicero's time the male free inhabitants of Rome did
+generally carry the candidates to whom they attached themselves. The
+salt of their republican theory was not as yet altogether washed out
+from their practice.
+
+The love of absolute liberty as it has been cultivated among modern
+races did not exist in the time of Cicero. The idea never seems to have
+reached even his bosom, human and humanitarian as were his sympathies,
+that a man, as man, should be free. Half the inhabitants of Rome were
+slaves, and the institution was so grafted in the life of the time that
+it never occurred to a Roman that slaves, as a body, should be
+manumitted. The slaves themselves, though they were not, as have been
+the slaves whom we have seen, of a different color and presumed inferior
+race, do not themselves seem to have entertained any such idea. They
+were instigated now and again to servile wars, but there was no rising
+in quest of freedom generally. Nor was it repugnant to the Roman theory
+of liberty that the people whom they dominated, though not subjected to
+slavery, should still be outside the pale of civil freedom. That boon
+was to be reserved for the Roman citizen, and for him only. It had
+become common to admit to citizenship the inhabitants of other towns and
+further territories. The glory was kept not altogether for Rome, but for
+Romans.
+
+Thus, though the government was oligarchical, and the very essence of
+freedom ignored, there was a something which stood in the name of
+liberty, and could endear itself to a real patriot. With genuine
+patriotism Cicero loved his country, and beginning his public life as he
+did at the close of Sylla's tyranny, he was able to entertain a dream
+that the old state of things might be restored and the republican form
+of government maintained. There should still be two Consuls in Rome,
+whose annual election would guard the State against regal dominion. And
+there should, at the same time, be such a continuance of power in the
+hands of the better class--the "optimates," as he called them--as would
+preserve the city from democracy and revolution. No man ever trusted
+more entirely to popular opinion than Cicero, or was more anxious for
+aristocratic authority. But neither in one direction nor the other did
+he look for personal aggrandizement, beyond that which might come to him
+in accordance with the law and in subjection to the old form of
+government.
+
+It is because he was in truth patriotic, because his dreams of a
+Republic were noble dreams, because he was intent on doing good in
+public affairs, because he was anxious for the honor of Rome and of
+Romans, not because he was or was not a "real power in the State" that
+his memory is still worth recording. Added to this was the intellect and
+the wit and erudition of the man, which were at any rate supreme. And
+then, though we can now see that his efforts were doomed to failure by
+the nature of the circumstances surrounding him, he was so nearly
+successful, so often on the verge of success, that we are exalted by the
+romance of his story into the region of personal sympathy. As we are
+moved by the aspirations and sufferings of a hero in a tragedy, so are
+we stirred by the efforts, the fortune, and at last the fall of this
+man. There is a picturesqueness about the life of Cicero which is
+wanting in the stories of Marius or Sylla, of Pompey, or even of
+Caesar--a picturesqueness which is produced in great part by these very
+doubtings which have been counted against him as insincerity.
+
+His hands were clean when the hands of all around him were defiled by
+greed. How infinitely Cicero must have risen above his time when he
+could have clean hands! A man in our days will keep himself clean from
+leprosy because to be a leper is to be despised by those around him.
+Advancing wisdom has taught us that such leprosy is bad, and public
+opinion coerces us. There is something too, we must suppose, in the
+lessons of Christianity. Or it may be that the man of our day, with all
+these advantages, does not keep himself clean--that so many go astray
+that public opinion shall almost seem to tremble in the balance. Even
+with us this and that abomination becomes allowable because so many do
+it. With the Romans, in the time of Cicero, greed, feeding itself on
+usury, rapine, and dishonesty, was so fully the recognized condition of
+life that its indulgence entailed no disgrace. But Cicero, with eyes
+within him which saw farther than the eyes of other men, perceived the
+baseness of the stain. It has been said also of him that he was not
+altogether free from reproach. It has been suggested that he accepted
+payment for his services as an advocate, any such payment being illegal.
+The accusation is founded on the knowledge that other advocates allowed
+themselves to be paid, and on the belief that Cicero could not have
+lived as he did without an income from that source. And then there is a
+story told of him that, though he did much at a certain period of his
+life to repress the usury, and to excite at the same time the enmity of
+a powerful friend, he might have done more. As we go on, the stories of
+these things will be told; but the very nature of the allegations
+against him prove how high he soared in honesty above the manners of his
+day. In discussing the character of the men, little is thought of the
+robberies of Sylla, the borrowings of Caesar, the money-lending of
+Brutus, or the accumulated wealth of Crassus. To plunder a province, to
+drive usury to the verge of personal slavery, to accept bribes for
+perjured judgment, to take illegal fees for services supposed to be
+gratuitous, was so much the custom of the noble Romans that we hardly
+hate his dishonest greed when displayed in its ordinary course. But
+because Cicero's honesty was abnormal, we are first surprised, and then,
+suspecting little deviations, rise up in wrath against him, because in
+the midst of Roman profligacy he was not altogether a Puritan in his
+money matters.
+
+Cicero is known to us in three great capacities: as a statesman, an
+advocate, and a man of letters. As the combination of such pursuits is
+common in our own days, so also was it in his. Caesar added them all to
+the great work of his life as a soldier. But it was given to Cicero to
+take a part in all those political struggles, from the resignation of
+Sylla to the first rising of the young Octavius, which were made on
+behalf of the Republic, and were ended by its downfall. His political
+life contains the story of the conversion of Rome from republican to
+imperial rule; and Rome was then the world. Could there have been no
+Augustus, no Nero, and then no Trajan, all Europe would have been
+different. Cicero's efforts were put forth to prevent the coming of an
+Augustus or a Nero, or the need of a Trajan; and as we read of them we
+feel that, had success been possible, he would have succeeded.
+
+As an advocate he was unsurpassed. From him came the feeling--whether it
+be right or wrong--that a lawyer, in pleading for his client, should
+give to that client's cause not only all his learning and all his wit,
+but also all his sympathy. To me it is marvellous, and interesting
+rather than beautiful, to see how completely Cicero can put off his own
+identity and assume another's in any cause, whatever it be, of which he
+has taken the charge. It must, however, be borne in mind that in old
+Rome the distinction between speeches made in political and in civil or
+criminal cases was not equally well marked as with us, and also that the
+reader having the speeches which have come down to us, whether of one
+nature or the other, presented to him in the same volume, is apt to
+confuse the public and that which may, perhaps, be called the private
+work of the man. In the speeches best known to us Cicero was working as
+a public man for public objects, and the ardor, I may say the fury, of
+his energy in the cause which he was advocating was due to his public
+aspirations. The orations which have come to us in three sets, some of
+them published only but never spoken--those against Verres, against
+Catiline, and the Philippics against Antony--were all of this nature,
+though the first concerned the conduct of a criminal charge against one
+individual. Of these I will speak in their turn; but I mention them here
+in order that I may, if possible, induce the reader to begin his inquiry
+into Cicero's character as an advocate with a just conception of the
+objects of the man. He wished, no doubt, to shine, as does the barrister
+of to-day: he wished to rise; he wished, if you will, to make his
+fortune, not by the taking of fees, but by extending himself into higher
+influence by the authority of his name. No doubt he undertook this and
+the other case without reference to the truth or honesty of the cause,
+and, when he did so, used all his energy for the bad, as he did for the
+good cause. There seems to be special accusation made against him on this
+head, as though, the very fact that he undertook his work without pay
+threw upon him the additional obligation of undertaking no cause that
+was not in itself upright. With us the advocate does this notoriously
+for his fee. Cicero did it as notoriously in furtherance of some
+political object of the moment, or in maintenance of a friendship which
+was politically important. I say nothing against the modern practice.
+This would not be the place for such an argument. Nor do I say that, by
+rules of absolute right and wrong, Cicero was right; but he was as
+right, at any rate, as the modern barrister. And in reaching the
+high-minded conditions under which he worked, he had only the light of
+his own genius to guide him. When compare the clothing of the savage
+race with our own, their beads and woad and straw and fibres with our
+own petticoats and pantaloons, we acknowledge the progress of
+civilization and the growth of machinery. It is not a wonderful thing to
+us that an African prince should not be as perfectly dressed as a young
+man in Piccadilly. But, when we make a comparison of morals between our
+own time and a period before Christ, we seem to forget that more should
+be expected from us than from those who lived two thousand years ago.
+
+There are some of those pleadings, speeches made by Cicero on behalf of
+or against an accused party, from which we may learn more of Roman life
+than from any other source left to us. Much we may gather from Terence,
+much from Horace, something from Juvenal. There is hardly, indeed, a
+Latin author from which an attentive reader may not pick up some detail
+of Roman customs. Cicero's letters are themselves very prolific. But the
+pretty things of the poets are not quite facts, nor are the bitter
+things of the satirist; and though a man's letters to his friend may be
+true, such letters as come to us will have been the products of the
+greater minds, and will have come from a small and special class. I fear
+that the Newgate Calendar of the day would tell us more of the ways of
+living then prevailing than the letters of Lady Mary W. Montagu or of
+Horace Walpole. From the orations against Verres we learn how the people
+of a province lived under the tyranny inflicted upon them; and from
+those spoken in defence of Sextus Amerinus and Aulus Cluentius, we
+gather something of the horrors of Roman life--not in Rome, indeed, but
+within the limits of Roman citizenship.
+
+It is, however, as a man of letters that Cicero will be held in the
+highest esteem. It has been his good-fortune to have a great part of
+what he wrote preserved for future ages. His works have not perished, as
+have those of his contemporaries, Varro and Hortensius. But this has
+been due to two causes, which were independent of Fortune. He himself
+believed in their value, and took measures for their protection; and
+those who lived in his own time, and in the immediately succeeding ages,
+entertained the same belief and took the same care. Livy said that, to
+write Latin well, the writer should write it like Cicero; and
+Quintilian, the first of Latin critics, repeated to us what Livy had
+asserted.[27] There is a sweetness of language about Cicero which runs
+into the very sound; so that passages read aright would, by their very
+cadences, charm the ear of listeners ignorant of the language. Eulogy
+never was so happy as his. Eulogy, however, is tasteless in comparison
+with invective. Cicero's abuse is awful. Let the reader curious in such
+matters turn to the diatribes against Vatinius, one of Caesar's
+creatures, and to that against the unfortunate Proconsul Piso; or to his
+attacks on Gabinius, who was Consul together with Piso in the year of
+Cicero's banishment. There are wonderful morsels in the philippics
+dealing with Antony's private character; but the words which he uses
+against Gabinius and Piso beat all that I know elsewhere in the science
+of invective. Junius could not approach him; and even Macaulay, though
+he has, in certain passages, been very bitter, has not allowed himself
+the latitude which Roman taste and Roman manners permitted to Cicero.
+
+It may, however, be said that the need of biographical memoirs as to a
+man of letters is by no means in proportion to the excellence of the
+work that he has achieved. Alexander is known but little to us, because
+we know so little of the details of his life. Caesar is much to us,
+because we have in truth been made acquainted with him. But Shakspeare,
+of whose absolute doings we know almost nothing, would not be nearer or
+dearer had he even had a Boswell to paint his daily portrait. The man of
+letters is, in truth, ever writing his own biography. What there is in
+his mind is being declared to the world at large by himself; and if he
+can so write that the world at large shall care to read what is written,
+no other memoir will, perhaps, be necessary. For myself I have never
+regretted those details of Shakspeare's life which a Boswell of the time
+might have given us. But Cicero's personality as a man of letters seems
+especially to require elucidation. His letters lose their chief charm if
+the character of the man be not known, and the incidents of his life.
+His essays on rhetoric--the written lessons which he has left on the art
+of oratory--are a running commentary on his own career as an orator.
+Most of his speeches require for their understanding a knowledge of the
+circumstances of his life. The treatises which we know as his
+Philosophy--works which have been most wrongly represented by being
+grouped under that name--can only be read with advantage by the light of
+his own experience. There are two separate classes of his so-called
+Philosophy, in describing which the word philosophy, if it be used at
+all, must be made to bear two different senses. He handles in one set of
+treatises, not, I think, with his happiest efforts, the teaching of the
+old Greek schools. Such are the Tusculan Disquisitions, the Academics,
+and the De Finibus. From reading these, without reference to the
+idiosyncrasies of the writer, the student would be led to believe that
+Cicero himself was a philosopher after that sort. But he was, in truth,
+the last of men to lend his ears
+
+    "To those budge doctors of the stoic fur."
+
+Cicero was a man thoroughly human in all his strength and all his
+weakness. To sit apart from the world and be happy amid scorn, poverty,
+and obscurity, with a mess of cabbage and a crust, absolutely contented
+with abstract virtue, has probably been given to no man; but of none has
+it been less within the reach than of Cicero. To him ginger was always
+hot in the mouth, whether it was the spice of politics, or of social
+delight, or of intellectual enterprise. When in his deep sorrow at the
+death of his daughter, when for a time the Republic was dead to him, and
+public and private life were equally black, he craved employment. Then
+he took down his Greek manuscripts and amused himself as best he might
+by writing this way or that. It was a matter on which his intellect
+could work and his energies be employed, though the theory of his life
+was in no way concerned in it. Such was one class of his Philosophy. The
+other consisted of a code of morals which he created for himself by his
+own convictions, formed on the world around him, and which displayed
+itself in essays, such as those De Officiis--on the duties of life; De
+Senectute, De Amicitia--on old age and friendship, and the like, which
+were not only intended for use, but are of use to any man or woman who
+will study them up to this day. There are others, treatises on law and
+on government and religion, which have all been lumped together, for the
+misguidance of school-boys, under the name of Cicero's Philosophy. But
+they, be they of one class or the other, require an understanding of the
+man's character before they can be enjoyed.
+
+For these reasons I think that there are incidents in the life, the
+character, and the work of Cicero which ought to make his biography
+interesting. His story is fraught with energy, with success, with
+pathos, and with tragedy. And then it is the story of a man human as men
+are now. No child of Rome ever better loved his country, but no child of
+Rome was ever so little like a Roman. Arms and battles were to him
+abominable, as they are to us. But arms and battles were the delight of
+Romans. He was ridiculed in his own time, and has been ridiculed ever
+since, for the alliterating twang of the line in which he declared his
+feeling:
+
+    "Cedant arma togae; concedat laurea linguae."
+
+But the thing said was thoroughly good, and the better because the
+opinion was addressed to men among whom the glory of arms was still in
+ascendant over the achievements of intellectual enterprise. The greatest
+men have been those who have stepped out from the mass, and gone beyond
+their time--seeing things, with eyesight almost divine, which have
+hitherto been hidden from the crowd. Such was Columbus when he made his
+way across the Western Ocean; such were Galileo and Bacon; such was
+Pythagoras, if the ideas we have of him be at all true. Such also was
+Cicero. It is not given to the age in which such men live to know them.
+Could their age even recognize them, they would not overstep their age
+as they do. Looking back at him now, we can see how like a Christian was
+the man--so like, that in essentials we can hardly see the difference.
+He could love another as himself--as nearly as a man may do; and he
+taught such love as a doctrine.[28] He believed in the existence of one
+supreme God.[29] He believed that man would rise again and live forever
+in some heaven.[30] I am conscious that I cannot much promote this view
+of Cicero's character by quoting isolated passages from his works--words
+which taken alone may be interpreted in one sense or another, and which
+should be read, each with its context, before their due meaning can be
+understood. But I may perhaps succeed in explaining to a reader what it
+is that I hope to do in the following pages, and why it is that I
+undertake a work which must be laborious, and for which many will think
+that there is no remaining need.
+
+I would not have it thought that, because I have so spoken of Cicero's
+aspirations and convictions, I intend to put him forth as a faultless
+personage in history. He was much too human to be perfect. Those who
+love the cold attitude of indifference may sing of Cato as perfect.
+Cicero was ambitious, and often unscrupulous in his ambition. He was a
+loving husband and a loving father; but at the end of his life he could
+quarrel with his old wife irrecoverably, and could idolize his daughter,
+while he ruined his son by indulgence. He was very great while he spoke
+of his country, which he did so often; but he was almost as little when
+he spoke of himself--which he did as often. In money-matters he was
+honest--for the times in which he lived, wonderfully honest; but in
+words he was not always equally trustworthy. He could flatter where he
+did not love. I admit that it was so, though I will not admit without a
+protest that the word insincere should be applied to him as describing
+his character generally. He was so much more sincere than others that
+the protest is needed. If a man stand but five feet eleven inches in his
+shoes, shall he be called a pygmy? And yet to declare that he measures
+full six feet would be untrue.
+
+Cicero was a busybody. Were there anything to do, he wished to do it,
+let it be what it might. "Cedant arma togae." If anything was written on
+his heart, it was that. Yet he loved the idea of leading an army, and
+panted for a military triumph. Letters and literary life were dear to
+him, and yet he liked to think that he could live on equal terms with
+the young bloods of Rome, such as C[oe]lius. As far as I can judge, he
+cared nothing for luxurious eating and drinking, and yet he wished to be
+reckoned among the gormands and gourmets of his times. He was so little
+like the "budge doctors of the stoic fur," of whom it was his delight to
+write when he had nothing else to do, that he could not bear any touch
+of adversity with equanimity. The stoic requires to be hardened against
+"the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune." It is his profession to
+be indifferent to the "whips and scorns of time." No man was less
+hardened, or more subject to suffering from scorns and whips. There be
+those who think proneness to such suffering is unmanly, or that the
+sufferer should at any rate hide his agony. Cicero did not. Whether of
+his glory or of his shame, whether of his joy or of his sorrow, whether
+of his love or of his hatred, whether of his hopes or of his despair, he
+spoke openly, as he did of all things. It has not been the way of
+heroes, as we read of them; but it is the way with men as we live with
+them.
+
+What a man he would have been for London life! How he would have enjoyed
+his club, picking up the news of the day from all lips, while he seemed
+to give it to all ears! How popular he would have been at the Carlton,
+and how men would have listened to him while every great or little
+crisis was discussed! How supreme he would have sat on the Treasury
+bench, or how unanswerable, how fatal, how joyous, when attacking the
+Government from the opposite seats! How crowded would have been his rack
+with invitations to dinner! How delighted would have been the
+middle-aged countesses of the time to hold with him mild intellectual
+flirtations--and the girls of the period, how proud to get his
+autograph, how much prouder to have touched the lips of the great orator
+with theirs! How the pages of the magazines would have run over with
+little essays from his pen! "Have you seen our Cicero's paper on
+agriculture? That lucky fellow, Editor ----, got him to do it last month!"
+"Of course you have read Cicero's article on the soul. The bishops don't
+know which way to turn." "So the political article in the _Quarterly_ is
+Cicero's?" "Of course you know the art-criticism in the _Times_ this
+year is Tully's doing?" But that would probably be a bounce. And then
+what letters he would write! With the penny-post instead of travelling
+messengers at his command, and pen instead of wax and sticks, or perhaps
+with an instrument-writer and a private secretary, he would have
+answered all questions and solved all difficulties. He would have so
+abounded with intellectual fertility that men would not have known
+whether most to admire his powers of expression or to deprecate his want
+of reticence.
+
+There will necessarily be much to be said of Cicero's writings in the
+following pages, as it is my object to delineate the literary man as
+well as the politician. In doing this, there arises a difficulty as to
+the sequence in which his works should be taken. It will hardly suit the
+purpose in view to speak of them all either chronologically or
+separately as to their subjects. The speeches and the letters clearly
+require the former treatment as applying each to the very moment of time
+at which they were either spoken or written. His treatises, whether on
+rhetoric or on the Greek philosophy, or on government, or on morals, can
+best be taken apart as belonging in a very small degree, if at all, to
+the period in which they were written. I will therefore endeavor to
+introduce the orations and letters as the periods may suit, and to treat
+of his essays afterward by themselves.
+
+A few words I must say as to the Roman names I have used in my
+narrative. There is a difficulty in this respect, because the practice
+of my boyhood has partially changed itself. Pompey used to be Pompey
+without a blush. Now with an erudite English writer he is generally
+Pompeius. The denizens of Africa--the "nigger" world--have had, I think,
+something to do with this. But with no erudite English writer is Terence
+Terentius, or Virgil Virgilius, or Horace Horatius. Were I to speak of
+Livius, the erudite English listener would think that I alluded to an
+old author long prior to our dear historian. And though we now talk of
+Sulla instead of Sylla, we hardly venture on Antonius instead of Antony.
+Considering all this, I have thought it better to cling to the sounds
+which have ever been familiar to myself; and as I talk of Virgil and of
+Horace and Ovid freely and without fear, so shall I speak also of Pompey
+and of Antony and of Catiline. In regard to Sulla, the change has been
+so complete that I must allow the old name to have re-established itself
+altogether.
+
+It has been customary to notify the division of years in the period of
+which I am about to write by dating from two different eras, counting
+down from the building of Rome, A.U.C., or "anno urbis conditae," and
+back from the birth of Christ, which we English mark by the letters
+B.C., before Christ. In dealing with Cicero, writers (both French and
+English) have not uncommonly added a third mode of dating, assigning his
+doings or sayings to the year of his age. There is again a fourth mode,
+common among the Romans, of indicating the special years by naming the
+Consuls, or one of them. "O nata mecum consule Manlio," Horace says,
+when addressing his cask of wine. That was, indeed, the official mode of
+indicating a date, and may probably be taken as showing how strong the
+impression in the Roman mind was of the succession of their Consuls. In
+the following pages I will use generally the date B.C., which, though
+perhaps less simple than the A.U.C., gives to the mind of the modern
+reader a clearer idea of the juxtaposition of events. The reader will
+surely know that Christ was born in the reign of Augustus, and crucified
+in that of Tiberius; but he will not perhaps know, without the trouble
+of some calculation, how far removed from the period of Christ was the
+year 648 A.U.C., in which Cicero was born. To this I will add on the
+margin the year of Cicero's life. He was nearly sixty-four when he died.
+I shall, therefore, call that year his sixty-third year.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+_HIS EDUCATION._
+
+
+At Arpinum, on the river Liris, a little stream which has been made to
+sound sweetly in our ears by Horace,[31] in a villa residence near the
+town, Marcus Tullius Cicero was born, 106 years before Christ, on the 3d
+of January, according to the calendar then in use. Pompey the Great was
+born in the same year. Arpinum was a State which had been admitted into
+Roman citizenship, lying between Rome and Capua, just within that
+portion of Italy which was till the other day called the Kingdom of
+Naples. The district from which he came is noted, also, as having given
+birth to Marius. Cicero was of an equestrian family, which means as much
+as though we were to say among ourselves that a man had been born a
+gentleman and nothing more. An "eques" or knight in Cicero's time became
+so, or might become so, by being in possession of a certain income. The
+title conferred no nobility. The plebeian, it will be understood, could
+not become patrician, though he might become noble--as Cicero did. The
+patrician must have been born so--must have sprung from the purple of
+certain fixed families.[32] Cicero was born a plebeian, of equestrian
+rank and became ennobled when he was ranked among the senators because
+of his service among the high magistrates of the Republic. As none of
+his family had served before him, he was "novus homo," a new man, and
+therefore not noble till he had achieved nobility himself. A man was
+noble who could reckon a Consul, a Praetor, or an AEdile among his
+ancestors. Such was not the case with Cicero. As he filled all these
+offices, his son was noble--as were his son's sons and grandsons, if
+such there were.
+
+It was common to Romans to have three names, and our Cicero had three.
+Marcus, which was similar in its use to the Christian name of one of us,
+had been that of his grandfather and father, and was handed on to his
+son. This, called the praenomen, was conferred on the child when a babe
+with a ceremony not unlike that of our baptism. There was but a limited
+choice of such names among the Romans, so that an initial letter will
+generally declare to those accustomed to the literature that intended.
+A. stands for Aulus, P. for Publius, M. generally for Marcus, C. for
+Caius, though there was a Cneus also. The nomen, Tullius, was that of
+the family. Of this family of Tullius to which Cicero belonged we know
+no details. Plutarch tells us that of his father nothing was said but in
+extremes, some declaring that he had been a fuller, and others that he
+had been descended from a prince who had governed the Volsci. We do not
+see why he may not have sprung from the prince, and also have been a
+fuller. There can, however, be no doubt that he was a gentleman, not
+uneducated himself, with means and the desire to give his children the
+best education which Rome or Greece afforded. The third name or
+cognomen, that of Cicero, belonged to a branch of the family of Tullius.
+This third name had generally its origin, as do so many of our surnames,
+in some specialty of place, or trade, or chance circumstance. It was
+said that an ancestor had been called Cicero from "cicer," a vetch,
+because his nose was marked with the figure of that vegetable. It is
+more probable that the family prospered by the growing and sale of
+vetches. Be that as it may, the name had been well established before
+the orator's time. Cicero's mother was one Helvia, of whom we are told
+that she was well-born and rich. Cicero himself never alludes to her--as
+neither, if I remember rightly, did Horace to his mother, though he
+speaks so frequently of his father. Helvia's younger son, Quintus, tells
+a story of his mother in a letter, which has been, by chance, preserved
+among those written by our Cicero. She was in the habit of sealing up
+the empty wine-jars, as well as those which were full, so that a jar
+emptied on the sly by a guzzling slave might be at once known. This is
+told in a letter to Tiro, a favorite slave belonging to Marcus, of whom
+we shall hear often in the course of our work. As the old lady sealed up
+the jars, though they contained no wine, so must Tiro write letters,
+though he has nothing to say in them. This kind of argument, taken from
+the old familiar stories of one's childhood and one's parents, could be
+only used to a dear and familiar friend. Such was Tiro, though still a
+slave, to the two brothers. Roman life admitted of such friendships,
+though the slave was so completely the creature of the master that his
+life and death were at the master's disposal. This is nearly all that is
+known of Cicero's father and mother, or of his old home.
+
+There is, however, sufficient evidence that the father paid great
+attention to the education of his sons--if, in the case of Marcus, any
+evidence were wanting where the result is so manifest by the work of his
+life. At a very early age, probably when he was eight--in the year which
+produced Julius Caesar--he was sent to Rome, and there was devoted to
+studies which from the first were intended to fit him for public life.
+Middleton says that the father lived in Rome with his son, and argues
+from this that he was a man of large means. But Cicero gives no
+authority for this. It is more probable that he lived at the house of
+one Aculeo, who had married his mother's sister, and had sons with whom
+Cicero was educated. Stories are told of his precocious talents and
+performances such as we are accustomed to hear of many remarkable
+men--not unfrequently from their own mouths. It is said of him that he
+was intimate with the two great advocates of the time, Lucius Crassus
+and Marcus Antonius the orator, the grandfather of Cicero's future
+enemy, whom we know as Marc Antony. Cicero speaks of them both as though
+he had seen them and talked much of them in his youth. He tells us
+anecdotes of them;[33] how they were both accustomed to conceal their
+knowledge of Greek, fancying that the people in whose eyes they were
+anxious to shine would think more of them if they seemed to have
+contented themselves simply with Roman words and Roman thoughts. But the
+intimacy was probably that which a lad now is apt to feel that he has
+enjoyed with a great man, if he has seen and heard him, and perhaps been
+taken by the hand. He himself gives in very plain language an account of
+his own studies when he was seventeen, eighteen, and nineteen. He speaks
+of the orators of that day[34]: "When I was above all things anxious to
+listen to these men, the banishment of Cotta was a great sorrow to me. I
+was passionately intent on hearing those who were left, daily writing,
+reading, and making notes. Nor was I content only with practice in the
+art of speaking. In the following year Varius had to go, condemned by
+his own enactment; and at this time, in working at the civil law, I gave
+much of my time to Quintus Scaevola, the son of Publius, who, though he
+took no pupils, by explaining points to those who consulted him, gave
+great assistance to students. The year after, when Sulla and Pompey were
+Consuls, I learned what oratory really means by listening to Publius
+Sulpicius, who as tribune was daily making harangues. It was then that
+Philo, the Chief of the Academy, with other leading philosophers of
+Athens, had been put to flight by the war with Mithridates, and had come
+to Rome. To him I devoted myself entirely, stirred up by a wonderful
+appetite for acquiring the Greek philosophy. But in that, though the
+variety of the pursuit and its greatness charmed me altogether, yet it
+seemed to me that the very essence of judicial conclusion was altogether
+suppressed. In that year Sulpicius perished, and in the next, three of
+our greatest orators, Quintus Catulus, Marcus Antonius, and Caius
+Julius, were cruelly killed." This was the time of the civil war between
+Marius and Sulla. "In the same year I took lessons from Molo the
+Rhodian, a great pleader and master of the art." In the next chapter he
+tells us that he passed his time also with Diodatus the Stoic, who
+afterward lived with him, and died in his house. Here we have an
+authentic description of the manner in which Cicero passed his time as a
+youth at Rome, and one we can reduce probably to absolute truth by
+lessening the superlatives. Nothing in it, however, is more remarkable
+than the confession that, while his young intellect rejoiced in the
+subtle argumentation of the Greek philosophers, his clear common sense
+quarrelled with their inability to reach any positive conclusion.
+
+But before these days of real study had come upon him he had given
+himself up to juvenile poetry. He is said to have written a poem called
+Pontius Glaucus when he was fourteen years old. This was no doubt a
+translation from the Greek, as were most of the poems that he wrote, and
+many portions of his prose treatises.[35] Plutarch tells us that the
+poem was extant in his time, and declares that, "in process of time,
+when he had studied this art with greater application, he was looked
+upon as the best poet, as well as the greatest orator in Rome." The
+English translators of Plutarch tell us that their author was an
+indifferent judge of Latin poetry, and allege as proof of this that he
+praised Cicero as a poet, a praise which he gave "contrary to the
+opinion of Juvenal." But Juvenal has given no opinion of Cicero's
+poetry, having simply quoted one unfortunate line noted for its egotism,
+and declared that Cicero would never have had his head cut off had his
+philippics been of the same nature.[36] The evidence of Quintus Mucius
+Scaevola as to Cicero's poetry was perhaps better, as he had the means,
+at any rate, of reading it. He believed that the Marius, a poem written
+by Cicero in praise of his great fellow-townsman, would live to
+posterity forever. The story of the old man's prophecy comes to us, no
+doubt, from Cicero himself, and is put into the mouth of his
+brother;[37] but had it been untrue it would have been contradicted.
+
+The Glaucus was a translation from the Greek done by a boy, probably as
+a boy's lesson It is not uncommon that such exercises should be
+treasured by parents, or perhaps by the performer himself, and not
+impossible that they should be made to reappear afterward as original
+compositions. Lord Brougham tells us in his autobiography that in his
+early youth he tried his hand at writing English essays, and even tales
+of fiction.[38] "I find one of these," he says, "has survived the
+waste-paper basket, and it may amuse my readers to see the sort of
+composition I was guilty of at the age of thirteen. My tale was entitled
+'Memnon, or Human Wisdom,' and is as follows." Then we have a fair
+translation of Voltaire's romance, "Memnon," or "La Sagesse Humaine."
+The old lord, when he was collecting his papers for his autobiography,
+had altogether forgotten his Voltaire, and thought that he had composed
+the story! Nothing so absurd as that is told of Cicero by himself or on
+his behalf.
+
+It may be as well to say here what there may be to be said as to
+Cicero's poetry generally. But little of it remains to us, and by that
+little it has been admitted that he has not achieved the name of a great
+poet; but what he did was too great in extent and too good in its nature
+to be passed over altogether without notice. It has been his fate to be
+rather ridiculed than read as a maker of verses, and that ridicule has
+come from two lines which I have already quoted. The longest piece which
+we have is from the Phaenomena of Aratus, which he translated from the
+Greek when he was eighteen years old, and which describes the heavenly
+bodies. It is known to us best by the extracts from it given by the
+author himself in his treatise, De Natura Deorum. It must be owned that
+it is not pleasant reading. But translated poetry seldom is pleasant,
+and could hardly be made so on such a subject by a boy of eighteen. The
+Marius was written two years after this, and we have a passage from it,
+quoted by the author in his De Divinatione, containing some fine lines.
+It tells the story of the battle of the eagle and the serpent. Cicero
+took it, no doubt (not translated it, however), from the passage in the
+Iliad, lib, xii, 200, which has been rendered by Pope with less than his
+usual fire, and by Lord Derby with no peculiar charm. Virgil has
+reproduced the picture with his own peculiar grace of words. His version
+has been translated by Dryden, but better, perhaps, by Christopher Pitt.
+Voltaire has translated Cicero's lines with great power, and Shelley has
+reproduced the same idea at much greater length in the first canto of
+the Revolt of Islam, taking it probably from Cicero, but, if not, from
+Voltaire.[39] I venture to think that, of the nine versions, Cicero's is
+the best, and that it is the most melodious piece of Latin poetry we
+have up to that date. Twenty-seven years afterward, when Lucretius was
+probably at work on his great poem, Cicero wrote an account of his
+consulship in verse. Of this we have fifty or sixty lines, in which the
+author describes the heavenly warnings which were given as to the
+affairs of his own consular year. The story is not a happy one, but the
+lines are harmonious. It is often worth our while to inquire how poetry
+has become such as it is, and how the altered and improved phases of
+versification have arisen. To trace our melody from Chaucer to Tennyson
+is matter of interest to us all. Of Cicero as a poet we may say that he
+found Latin versification rough, and left it smooth and musical. Now, as
+we go on with the orator's life and prose works, we need not return to
+his poetry.
+
+The names of many masters have been given to us as those under whom
+Cicero's education was carried on. Among others he is supposed, at a
+very early age, to have been confided to Archias. Archias was a Greek,
+born at Antioch, who devoted himself to letters, and, if we are to
+believe what Cicero says, when speaking as an advocate, excelled all his
+rivals of the day. Like many other educated Greeks, he made his way to
+Rome, and was received as one of the household of Lucullus, with whom he
+travelled, accompanying him even to the wars. He became a citizen of
+Rome--so Cicero assures us--and Cicero's tutor. What Cicero owed to him
+we do not know, but to Cicero Archias owed immortality. His claim to
+citizenship was disputed; and Cicero, pleading on his behalf, made one
+of those shorter speeches which are perfect in melody, in taste, and in
+language. There is a passage in which speaking on behalf of so excellent
+a professor in the art, he sings the praises of literature generally. I
+know no words written in praise of books more persuasive or more
+valuable. "Other recreations," he says, "do not belong to all seasons
+nor to all ages, nor to all places. These pursuits nourish our youth and
+delight our old age. They adorn our prosperity and give a refuge and a
+solace to our troubles. They charm us at home, and they are not in our
+way when we are abroad. They go to bed with us. They travel about with
+us. They accompany us as we escape into the country."[40] Archias
+probably did something for him in directing his taste, and has been
+rewarded thus richly. As to other lessons, we know that he was
+instructed in law by Scaevola, and he has told us that he listened to
+Crassus and Antony. At sixteen he went through the ceremony of putting
+off his boy's dress, the toga praetexta, and appearing in the toga
+virilis before the Praetor, thus assuming his right to go about a man's
+business. At sixteen the work of education was _not_ finished--no more
+than it is with us when a lad at Oxford becomes "of age" at twenty-one;
+nor was he put beyond his father's power, the "patria potestas," from
+which no age availed to liberate a son; but, nevertheless, it was a very
+joyful ceremony, and was duly performed by Cicero in the midst of his
+studies with Scaevola.
+
+At eighteen he joined the army. That doctrine of the division of labor
+which now, with us, runs through and dominates all pursuits, had not as
+yet been made plain to the minds of men at Rome by the political
+economists of the day. It was well that a man should know something of
+many things--that he should especially, if he intended to be a leader of
+men, be both soldier and orator. To rise to be Consul, having first been
+Quaestor, AEdile, and Praetor, was the path of glory. It had been the
+special duty of the Consuls of Rome, since the establishment of consular
+government, to lead the armies of the Republic. A portion of the duty
+devolved upon the Praetors, as wars became more numerous; and latterly
+the commanders were attended by Quaestors. The Governors of the
+provinces, Proconsuls, or Propraetors with proconsular authority, always
+combined military with civil authority. The art of war was, therefore, a
+necessary part of the education of a man intended to rise in the service
+of the State. Cicero, though, in his endeavor to follow his own tastes,
+he made a strong effort to keep himself free from such work, and to
+remain at Rome instead of being sent abroad as a Governor, had at last
+to go where fighting was in some degree necessary, and, in the saddest
+phase of his life, appeared in Italy with his lictors, demanding the
+honors of a triumph. In anticipation of such a career, no doubt under
+the advice of his friends, he now went out to see, if not a battle,
+something, at any rate, of war. It has already been said how the
+citizenship of Rome was conferred on some of the small Italian States
+around, and not on others. Hence, of course, arose jealousy, which was
+increased by the feeling on the part of those excluded that they were
+called to furnish soldiers to Rome, as well as those who were included.
+Then there was formed a combination of Italian cities, sworn to remedy
+the injury thus inflicted on them. Their purpose was to fight Rome in
+order that they might achieve Roman citizenship; and hence arose the
+first civil war which distracted the Empire. Pompeius Strabo, father of
+Pompey the Great, was then Consul (B.C. 89), and Cicero was sent out to
+see the campaign under him. Marius and Sulla, the two Romans who were
+destined soon to bathe Rome in blood, had not yet quarrelled, though
+they had been brought to hate each other--Marius by jealousy, and Sulla
+by rivalry. In this war they both served under the Consuls, and Cicero
+served with Sulla. We know nothing of his doings in that campaign. There
+are no tidings even of a misfortune such as that which happened to
+Horace when he went out to fight, and came home from the battle-field
+"relicta non bene parmula."
+
+Rome trampled on the rebellious cities, and in the end admitted them to
+citizenship. But probably the most important, certainly the most
+notorious, result of the Italian war, was the deep antagonism of Marius
+and Sulla. Sulla had made himself conspicuous by his fortune on the
+occasion, whereas Marius, who had become the great soldier of the
+Republic, and had been six times Consul, failed to gather fresh laurels.
+Rome was falling into that state of anarchy which was the cause of all
+the glory and all the disgrace of Cicero's life, and was open to the
+dominion of any soldier whose grasp might be the least scrupulous and
+the strongest. Marius, after a series of romantic adventures with which
+we must not connect ourselves here, was triumphant only just before his
+death, while Sulla went off with his army, pillaged Athens, plundered
+Asia Minor generally, and made terms with Mithridates, though he did not
+conquer him. With the purport, no doubt, of conquering Mithridates, but
+perhaps with the stronger object of getting him out of Rome, the army
+had been intrusted to him, with the consent of the Marian faction.
+
+Then came those three years, when Sulla was in the East and Marius dead,
+of which Cicero speaks as a period of peace, in which a student was able
+to study in Rome. "Triennium fere fuit urbs sine armis."[41] These must
+have been the years 86, 85, and 84 before Christ, when Cicero was
+twenty-one, twenty-two, and twenty-three years old; and it was this
+period, in truth, of which he speaks, and not of earlier years, when he
+tells us of his studies with Philo, and Molo, and Diodatus. Precocious
+as he was in literature, writing one poem--or translating it--when he
+was fourteen, and another when he was eighteen, he was by no means in a
+hurry to commence the work of his life. He is said also to have written
+a treatise on military tactics when he was nineteen; which again, no
+doubt, means that he had exercised himself by translating such an essay
+from the Greek. This, happily, does not remain. But we have four books,
+Rhetoricorum ad C. Herennium, and two books De Inventione, attributed to
+his twentieth and twenty-first years, which are published with his
+works, and commence the series. Of all that we have from him, they are
+perhaps the least worth reading; but as they are, or were, among his
+recognized writings, a word shall be said of them in their proper place.
+
+The success of the education of Cicero probably became a commonplace
+among Latin school-masters and Latin writers. In the dialogue De
+Oratoribus, attributed to Tacitus, the story of it is given by Messala
+when he is praising the orators of the earlier age. "We know well," says
+Messala, "that book of Cicero which is called Brutus, in the latter part
+of which he describes to us the beginning and the progress of his own
+eloquence, and, as it were, the bringing up on which it was founded. He
+tells us that he had learned civil law under Q. Mutius Scaevola; that he
+had exhausted the realm of philosophy--learning that of the Academy
+under Philo, and that of the Stoics under Diodatus; that, not content
+with these treatises, he had travelled through Greece and Asia, so as to
+embrace the whole world of art. And thus it had come about that in the
+works of Cicero no knowledge is wanting--neither of music, nor of
+grammar, nor any other liberal accomplishment. He understood the
+subtilty of logic, the purpose of ethics, the effects and causes of
+things." Then the speaker goes on to explain what may be expected from
+study such as that. "Thus it is, my good friends--thus, that from the
+acquirement of many arts, and from a general knowledge of all things,
+eloquence that is truly admirable is created in its full force; for the
+power and capacity of an orator need not be hemmed in, as are those of
+other callings, by certain narrow bounds; but that man is the true
+orator who is able to speak on all subjects with dignity and grace, so
+as to persuade those who listen, and to delight them, in a manner suited
+to the nature of the subject in hand and the convenience of the
+time."[42]
+
+We might fancy that we were reading words from Cicero himself! Then the
+speaker in this imaginary conversation goes on to tell us how far
+matters had derogated in his time, pointing out at the same time that
+the evils which he deplores had shown themselves even before Cicero, but
+had been put down, as far as the law could put them down, by its
+interference. He is speaking of those schools of rhetoric in which Greek
+professors of the art gave lessons for money, which were evil in their
+nature, and not, as it appears, efficacious even for the purpose in
+hand. "But now," continues Messala, "our very boys are brought into the
+schools of those lecturers who are called 'rhetores,' who had sprung up
+before Cicero, to the displeasure of our ancestors, as is evident from
+the fact that when Crassus and Domitius were Censors they were ordered
+to shut up their school of impudence, as Cicero calls it. Our boys, as I
+was going to say, are taken to these lecture-rooms, in which it is hard
+to say whether the atmosphere of the place, or the lads they are thrown
+among, or the nature of the lessons taught, are the most injurious. In
+the place itself there is neither discipline nor respect. All who go
+there are equally ignorant. The boys among the boys, the lads among the
+lads, utter and listen to just what words they please. Their very
+exercises are, for the most part, useless. Two kinds are in vogue with
+these 'rhetores,' called 'suasoriae' and 'controversiae,'" tending, we may
+perhaps say, to persuade or to refute. "Of these, the 'suasoriae,' as
+being the lighter and requiring less of experience, are given to the
+little boys, the 'controversiae' to the bigger lads. But--oh heavens,
+what they are--what miserable compositions!" Then he tells us the
+subjects selected. Rape, incest, and other horrors are subjected to the
+lads for their declamation, in order that they may learn to be orators.
+
+Messala then explains that in those latter days--his days, that
+is--under the rule of despotic princes, truly large subjects are not
+allowed to be discussed in public--confessing, however, that those large
+subjects, though they afford fine opportunities to orators, are not
+beneficial to the State at large. But it was thus, he says, that Cicero
+became what he was, who would not have grown into favor had he defended
+only P. Quintius and Archias, and had had nothing to do with Catiline,
+or Milo, or Verres, or Antony--showing, by-the-way, how great was the
+reputation of that speech, Pro Milone, with which we shall have to deal
+farther on.
+
+The treatise becomes somewhat confused, a portion of it having
+probably been lost. From whose mouth the last words are supposed to
+come is not apparent. It ends with a rhapsody in favor of imperial
+government--suitable, indeed, to the time of Domitian, but very unlike
+Tacitus. While, however, it praises despotism, it declares that only by
+the evils which despotism had quelled could eloquence be maintained.
+"Our country, indeed, while it was astray in its government; while it
+tore itself to pieces by parties and quarrels and discord; while there
+was no peace in the Forum, no agreement in the Senate, no moderation on
+the judgment-seat, no reverence for letters, no control among the
+magistrates, boasted, no doubt, a stronger eloquence."
+
+From what we are thus told of Cicero, not what we hear from himself, we
+are able to form an idea of the nature of his education. With his mind
+fixed from his early days on the ambition of doing something noble with
+himself, he gave himself up to all kinds of learning. It was Macaulay, I
+think, who said of him that the idea of conquering the "omne
+scibile,"--the understanding of all things within the reach of human
+intellect--was before his eyes as it was before those of Bacon. The
+special preparation which was, in Cicero's time, employed for students
+at the bar is also described in the treatise from which I have
+quoted--the preparation which is supposed to have been the very opposite
+of that afforded by the "rhetores." "Among ourselves, the youth who was
+intended to achieve eloquence in the Forum, when already trained at home
+and exercised in classical knowledge, was brought by his father or his
+friends to that orator who might then be considered to be the leading
+man in the city. It became his daily work to follow that man, to
+accompany him, to be conversant with all his speeches, whether in the
+courts of law or at public meetings, so that he might learn, if I might
+say so, to fight in the very thick of the throng." It was thus that
+Cicero studied his art. A few lines farther down, the pseudo-Tacitus
+tells us that Crassus, in his nineteenth year, held a brief against
+Carbo; that Caesar did so in his twenty-first against Dolabella; and
+Pollio, in his twenty-second year, against Cato.[43] In this precocity
+Cicero did not imitate Crassus, or show an example to the Romans who
+followed him. He was twenty-six when he pleaded his first cause. Sulla
+had then succeeded in crushing the Marian faction, and the Sullan
+proscriptions had taken place, and were nominally over. Sulla had been
+declared Dictator, and had proclaimed that there should be no more
+selections for death. The Republic was supposed to be restored.
+"Recuperata republica * * * tum primum nos ad causas et privatas et
+publicas adire c[oe]pimus,"[44] "The Republic having been restored, I then
+first applied myself to pleadings, both private and public."
+
+Of Cicero's politics at that time we are enabled to form a fair
+judgment. Marius had been his townsman; Sulla had been his captain. But
+the one thing dear to him was the Republic--what he thought to be the
+Republic. He was neither Marian nor Sullan. The turbulence in which so
+much noble blood had flowed--the "crudelis interitus oratorum," the
+crushing out of the old legalized form of government--was abominable to
+him. It was his hope, no doubt his expectation, that these old forms
+should be restored in all their power. There seemed to be more
+probability of this--there was more probability of it--on the side of
+Sulla than the other. On Sulla's side was Pompey, the then rising man,
+who, being of the same age with Cicero, had already pushed himself into
+prominence, who was surnamed the Great, and who "triumphed" during these
+very two years in which Cicero began his career; who through Cicero's
+whole life was his bugbear, his stumbling-block, and his mistake. But on
+that side were the "optimates," the men who, if they did not lead, ought
+to lead the Republic; those who, if they were not respectable, ought to
+be so; those who, if they did not love their country, ought to love it.
+If there was a hope, it was with them. The old state of things--that
+oligarchy which has been called a Republic--had made Rome what it was;
+had produced power, civilization, art, and literature. It had enabled
+such a one as Cicero was himself to aspire to lead, though he had been
+humbly born, and had come to Rome from an untried provincial family. To
+him the Republic--as he fancied that it had been, as he fancied that it
+might be--was all that was good, all that was gracious, all that was
+beneficent. On Sulla's side lay what chance there was of returning to
+the old ways. When Sulla was declared Dictator, it was presumed that the
+Republic was restored. But not on this account should it be supposed
+that Cicero regarded the proscriptions of Sulla with favor, or that he
+was otherwise than shocked by the wholesale robberies for which the
+proscription paved the way. This is a matter with which it will be
+necessary to deal more fully when we come in our next chapter to the
+first speeches made by Cicero; in the very first of which, as I place
+them, he attacks the Sullan robberies with an audacity which, when we
+remember that Sulla was still in power, rescues, at any rate, in regard
+to this period of his life, the character of the orator from that charge
+of cowardice which has been imputed to him.
+
+It is necessary here, in this chapter devoted to the education of
+Cicero, to allude to his two first speeches, because that education was
+not completed till afterward--so that they may be regarded as
+experiments, or trials, as it were, of his force and sufficiency. "Not
+content with these teachers"--teachers who had come to Rome from Greece
+and Asia--"he had travelled through Greece and Asia, so as to embrace
+the whole world of art." These words, quoted a few pages back from the
+treatise attributed to Tacitus, refer to a passage in the Brutus in
+which Cicero makes a statement to that effect. "When I reached
+Athens,[45] I passed six months with Antiochus, by far the best known
+and most erudite of the teachers of the old Academy, and with him, as my
+great authority and master, I renewed that study of philosophy which I
+had never abandoned--which from my boyhood I had followed with always
+increasing success. At the same time I practised oratory laboriously
+with Demetrius Syrus, also at Athens, a well-known and by no means
+incapable master of the art of speaking. After that I wandered over all
+Asia, and came across the best orators there, with whom I practised,
+enjoying their willing assistance." There is more of it, which need not
+be repeated verbatim, giving the names of those who aided him in Asia:
+Menippus of Stratonice--who, he says, was sweet enough to have belonged
+himself to Athens--with Dionysius of Magnesia, with [OE]schilus of Cnidos,
+and with Xenocles of Adramyttium. Then at Rhodes he came across his old
+friend Molo, and applied himself again to the teaching of his former
+master. Quintilian explains to us how this was done with a purpose, so
+that the young orator, when he had made a first attempt with his
+half-fledged wings in the courts, might go back to his masters for
+awhile[46].
+
+He was twenty-eight when he started on this tour. It has been suggested
+that he did so in fear of the resentment of Sulla, with whose favorites
+and with whose practices he had dealt very plainly. There is no reason
+for alleging this, except that Sulla was powerful, that Sulla was
+blood-thirsty, and that Sulla must have been offended. This kind of
+argument is often used. It is supposed to be natural, or at least
+probable, that in a certain position a man should have been a coward or
+a knave, ungrateful or cruel; and in the presumption thus raised the
+accusation is brought against him. "Fearing Sulla's resentment,"
+Plutarch says, "he travelled into Greece, and gave out that the recovery
+of his health was the motive." There is no evidence that such was his
+reason for travelling; and, as Middleton says in his behalf, it is
+certain that he "continued for a year after this in Rome without any
+apprehension of danger." It is best to take a man's own account of his
+own doings and their causes, unless there be ground for doubting the
+statement made. It is thus that Cicero himself speaks of his journey:
+"Now," he says, still in his Brutus[47], "as you wish to know what I
+am--not simply what mark I may have on my body from my birth, or with
+what surroundings of childhood I was brought up--I will include some
+details which might perhaps seem hardly necessary. At this time I was
+thin and weak, my neck being long and narrow--a habit and form of body
+which is supposed to be adverse to long life; and those who loved me
+thought the more of this, because I had taken to speaking without
+relaxation, without recreation with all the powers of my voice, and with
+much muscular action. When my friends and the doctors desired me to give
+up speaking, I resolved that, rather than abandon my career as an
+orator, I would face any danger. But when it occurred to me that by
+lowering my voice, by changing my method of speaking, I might avoid the
+danger, and at the same time learn to speak with more elegance, I
+accepted that as a reason for going into Asia, so that I might study how
+to change my mode of elocution. Thus, when I had been two years at work
+upon causes, and when my name was already well known in the Forum, I
+took my departure, and left Rome."
+
+During the six months that he was at Athens he renewed an early
+acquaintance with one who was destined to become the most faithful, and
+certainly the best known, of his friends. This was Titus Pomponius,
+known to the world as that Atticus to whom were addressed something more
+than half the large body of letters which were written by Cicero, and
+which have remained for our use.[48] He seems to have lived much with
+Atticus, who was occupied with similar studies, though with altogether
+different results. Atticus applied himself to the practices of the
+Epicurean school, and did in truth become "Epicuri de grege porcus." To
+enjoy life, to amass a fortune, to keep himself free from all turmoils
+of war or state, to make the best of the times, whether they were bad or
+good, without any attempt on his part to mend them--this was the
+philosophy of Titus Pomponius, who was called Atticus because Athens,
+full of art and literature, easy, unenergetic, and luxurious, was dear
+to him. To this philosophy, or rather to this theory of life, Cicero was
+altogether opposed. He studied in all the schools--among the Platonists,
+the Stoics, even with the Epicureans enough to know their dogmas so that
+he might criticise them--proclaiming himself to belong to the new
+Academy, or younger school of Platonists, but in truth drawing no system
+of morals or rule of life from any of them. To him, and also to Atticus,
+no doubt, these pursuits afforded an intellectual pastime. Atticus found
+himself able to justify to himself the bent of his disposition by the
+name of a philosopher, and therefore became an Epicurean. Cicero could
+in no way justify to himself any deviation from the energy of public
+life, from its utility, from its ambition, from its loves, or from its
+hatred; and from the Greek philosophers whom he named of this or the
+other school, received only some assistance in that handling of
+so-called philosophy which became the chief amusement of his future
+life. This was well understood by the Latin authors who wrote of Cicero
+after his own time. Quintilian, speaking of Cicero and Brutus as writers
+of philosophy, says of the latter, "Suffecit ponderi rerum; scias enim
+sentire quae dicit."[49]--"He was equal to the weight of the subject, for
+you feel that he believes what he writes." He leaves the inference, of
+course, that Cicero wrote on such matters only for the exercise of his
+ingenuity, as a school-boy writes.
+
+When at Athens, Cicero was initiated into the Eleusinian mysteries--as
+to which Mr. Collins, in his little volume on Cicero, in the Ancient
+Classics for English Readers, says that they "contained under this veil
+whatever faith in the Invisible and Eternal rested in the mind of an
+enlightened pagan." In this Mr. Collins is fully justified by what
+Cicero himself has said although the character thus given to these
+mysteries is very different from that which was attributed to them by
+early Christian writers. They were to those pious but somewhat
+prejudiced theologists mysterious and pagan, and therefore horrible.[50]
+But Cicero declares in his dialogue with Atticus, De Legibus, written
+when he was fifty-five years old, in the prime of his intellect, that
+"of all the glories and divine gifts which your Athens has produced for
+the improvement of men nothing surpasses these mysteries, by which the
+harshness of our uncivilized life has been softened, and we have been
+lifted up to humanity; and as they are called 'initia,'" by which
+aspirants were initiated, "so we have in truth found in them the seeds
+of a new life. Nor have we received from them only the means of living
+with satisfaction, but also of dying with a better hope as to the
+future."[51]
+
+Of what took place with Cicero and Atticus at their introduction to the
+Eleusinian mysteries we know nothing. But it can hardly be that, with
+such memories running in his mind after thirty years, expressed in such
+language to the very friend who had then been his companion, they should
+not have been accepted by him as indicating the commencement of some
+great line of thought. The two doctrines which seem to mark most clearly
+the difference between the men whom we regard, the one as a pagan and
+the other as a Christian, are the belief in a future life and the duty
+of doing well by our neighbors. Here they are both indicated, the former
+in plain language, and the latter in that assurance of the softening of
+the barbarity of uncivilized life, "Quibus ex agresti immanique vita
+exculti ad humanitatem et mitigati sumus."
+
+Of the inner life of Cicero at this moment--how he ate, how he drank,
+with what accompaniment of slaves he lived, how he was dressed, and how
+lodged--we know very little; but we are told enough to be aware that he
+could not have travelled, as he did in Greece and Asia, without great
+expense. His brother Quintus was with him, so that cost, if not double,
+was greatly increased. Antiochus, Demetrius Syrus, Molo, Menippus, and
+the others did not give him their services for nothing. These were
+gentlemen of whom we know that they were anxious to carry their wares to
+the best market. And then he seems to have been welcomed wherever he
+went, as though travelling in some sort "en prince." No doubt he had
+brought with him the best introductions which Rome could afford; but
+even with them a generous allowance must have been necessary, and this
+must have come from his father's pocket.
+
+As we go on, a question will arise as to Cicero's income and the sources
+whence it came. He asserts of himself that he was never paid for his
+services at the bar. To receive such payment was illegal, but was usual.
+He claims to have kept himself exempt from whatever meanness there may
+have been in so receiving such fees--exempt, at any rate, from the fault
+of having broken the law. He has not been believed. There is no evidence
+to convict him of falsehood, but he has not been believed, because there
+have not been found palpable sources of income sufficient for an
+expenditure so great as that which we know to have been incident to the
+life he led. But we do not know what were his father's means. Seeing the
+nature of the education given to the lad, of the manner in which his
+future life was prepared for him from his earliest days, of the promise
+made to him from his boyhood of a career in the metropolis if he could
+make himself fit for it, of the advantages which costly travel afforded
+him, I think we have reason to suppose that the old Cicero was an
+opulent man, and that the house at Arpinum was no humble farm, or
+fuller's poor establishment.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+_THE CONDITION OF ROME._
+
+
+It is far from my intention to write a history of Rome during the
+Ciceronian period. Were I to attempt such a work, I should have to
+include the doings of Sertorius in Spain, of Lucullus and Pompey in the
+East, Caesar's ten years in Gaul, and the civil wars from the taking of
+Marseilles to the final battles of Thapsus and Munda. With very many of
+the great events which the period includes Cicero took but slight
+concern--so slight that we can hardly fail to be astonished when we find
+how little he had to say of them--he who ran through all the offices of
+the State, who was the chosen guardian of certain allied cities, who has
+left to us so large a mass of correspondence on public subjects, and who
+was essentially a public man for thirty-four years. But he was a public
+man who concerned himself personally with Rome rather than with the
+Roman Empire. Home affairs, and not foreign affairs, were dear to him.
+To Caesar's great deeds in Gaul we should have had from him almost no
+allusion, had not his brother Quintus been among Caesar's officers, and
+his young friend Trebatius been confided by himself to Caesar's care. Of
+Pharsalia we only learn from him that, in utter despair of heart, he
+allowed himself to be carried to the war. Of the proconsular governments
+throughout the Roman Empire we should not learn much from Cicero, were
+it not that it has been shown to us by the trial of Verres how atrocious
+might be the conduct of a Roman Governor, and by the narratives of
+Cicero's own rule in Cilicia, how excellent. The history of the time has
+been written for modern readers by Merivale and Mommsen, with great
+research and truth as to facts, but, as I think with some strong
+feeling. Now Mr. Froude has followed with his Caesar, which might well
+have been called Anti-Cicero. All these in lauding, and the two latter
+in deifying, the successful soldier, have, I think, dealt hardly with
+Cicero, attributing to his utterances more than they mean; doubting his
+sincerity, but seeing clearly the failure of his political efforts. With
+the great facts of the Roman Empire as they gradually formed themselves
+from the fall of Carthage, when the Empire began,[52] to the
+establishment of Augustus, when it was consummated, I do not pretend to
+deal, although by far the most momentous of them were crowded into the
+life of Cicero. But in order that I may, if possible, show the condition
+of his mind toward the Republic--that I may explain what it was that he
+hoped and why he hoped it--I must go back and relate in a few words what
+it was that Marius and Sulla had done for Rome.
+
+Of both these men all the doings with which history is greatly concerned
+were comprised within the early years of Cicero's life. Marius, indeed,
+was nearly fifty years of age when his fellow-townsman was born, and had
+become a distinguished soldier, and, though born of humble parents, had
+pushed himself to the Consulate. His quarrel with Sulla had probably
+commenced, springing from jealousy as to deeds done in the Jugurthine
+war. But it is not matter of much moment, now that Marius had proved
+himself to be a good and hardy soldier, excepting in this, that, by
+making himself a soldier in early life, he enabled himself in his latter
+years to become the master of Rome.
+
+Sulla, too, was born thirty-two years before Cicero--a patrician of the
+bluest blood--and having gone, as we say, into public life, and having
+been elected Quaestor, became a soldier by dint of office, as a man with
+us may become head of the Admiralty. As Quaestor he was sent to join
+Marius in Africa a few months before Cicero was born. Into his hands, as
+it happened, not into those of Marius, Jugurtha was surrendered by his
+father-in-law, Bocchus, who thought thus to curry favor with the Romans.
+Thence came those internecine feuds, in which, some twenty-five years
+later, all Rome was lying butchered. The cause of quarrelling between
+these two men, the jealousies which grew in the heart of the elder, from
+the renewed successes of the younger, are not much to us now; but the
+condition to which Rome had been brought, when two such men could
+scramble for the city, and each cut the throats of the relatives,
+friends, and presumed allies of the other, has to be inquired into by
+those who would understand what Rome had been, what it was, and what it
+was necessarily to become.
+
+When Cicero was of an age to begin to think of these things, and had put
+on the "toga virilis," and girt himself with a sword to fight under the
+father of Pompey for the power of Rome against the Italian allies who
+were demanding citizenship, the quarrel was in truth rising to its
+bitterness. Marius and Sulla were on the same side in that war. But
+Marius had then not only been Consul, but had been six times Consul; and
+he had beaten the Teutons and the Cimbrians, by whom Romans had feared
+that all Italy would be occupied. What was not within the power of such
+a leader of soldiers? and what else but a leader of soldiers could
+prevail when Italy and Rome, but for such a General, had been at the
+mercy of barbaric hordes, and when they had been compelled to make that
+General six times Consul?
+
+Marius seems to have been no politician. He became a soldier and then a
+General; and because he was great as a soldier and General, the affairs
+of the State fell into his hands with very little effort. In the old
+days of Rome military power had been needed for defence, and successful
+defence had of course produced aggressive masterhood and increased
+territory. When Hannibal, while he was still lingering in Italy, had
+been circumvented by the appearance of Scipio in Africa and the Romans
+had tasted the increased magnificence of external conquest, the desire
+for foreign domination became stronger than that of native rule. From
+that time arms were in the ascendant rather than policy. Up to that time
+a Consul had to become a General, because it was his business to look
+after the welfare of the State. After that time a man became a Consul in
+order that he might be a General. The toga was made to give way to the
+sword, and the noise of the Forum to the trumpets. We, looking back now,
+can see that it must have been so, and we are prone to fancy that a wise
+man looking forward then might have read the future. In the days of
+Marius there was probably no man so wise. Caesar was the first to see it.
+Cicero would have seen it, but that the idea was so odious to him that
+he could not acknowledge to himself that it need be so. His life was one
+struggle against the coming evil--against the time in which brute force
+was to be made to dominate intellect and civilization. His "cedant arma
+togae" was a scream, an impotent scream, against all that Sulla had done
+or Caesar was about to do. The mischief had been effected years before
+his time, and had gone too far ahead to be arrested even by his tongue.
+Only, in considering these things, let us confess that Cicero saw what
+was good and what was evil, though he was mistaken in believing that the
+good was still within reach.
+
+Marius in his way was a Caesar--as a soldier, undoubtedly a very
+efficient Caesar--having that great gift of ruling his own appetites
+which enables those who possess it to conquer the appetites of others.
+It may be doubted whether his quickness in stopping and overcoming the
+two great hordes from the north, the Teutons and the Cimbrians, was not
+equal in strategy to anything that Caesar accomplished in Gaul. It is
+probable that Caesar learned much of his tactics from studying the
+man[oe]uvres of Marius. But Marius was only a General. Though he became
+hot in Roman politics, audacious and confident, knowing how to use and
+how to disregard various weapons of political power as they had been
+handed down by tradition and law, the "vetoes" and the auguries, and the
+official dignities, he used them, or disregarded them, in quest only of
+power for himself. He was able to perceive how vain was law in such a
+period as that in which he lived; and that, having risen by force of
+arms, he must by force of arms keep his place or lose his life. With
+him, at least, there was no idea of Roman liberty, little probably of
+Roman glory, except so far as military glory and military power go
+together.
+
+Sulla was a man endowed with a much keener insight into the political
+condition of the world around him. To make a dash for power, as a dog
+might do, and keep it in his clutch as a dog would, was enough for
+Marius. Sulla could see something of future events. He could understand
+that, by reducing men around him to a low level, he could make fast his
+own power over them, and that he could best do this by cutting off the
+heads of all who stood a little higher than their neighbors. He might
+thus produce tranquillity, and security to himself and others. Some
+glimmer of an idea of an Augustan rule was present to him; and with the
+view of producing it, he re-established many of the usages of the
+Republic, not reproducing the liberty but the forms of liberty. It seems
+to have been his idea that a Sullan party might rule the Empire by
+adherence to these forms. I doubt if Marius had any fixed idea of
+government. To get the better of his enemies, and then to grind them
+into powder under his feet, to seize rank and power and riches, and then
+to enjoy them, to sate his lust with blood and money and women, at last
+even with wine, and to feed his revenge by remembering the hard things
+which he was made to endure during the period of his overthrow--this
+seems to have been enough for Marius.[53] With Sulla there was
+understanding that the Empire must be ruled, and that the old ways would
+be best if they could be made compatible with the newly-concentrated
+power.
+
+The immediate effect upon Rome, either from one or from the other, was
+nearly the same. In the year 87 B.C. Marius occupied himself in
+slaughtering the Sullan party--during which, however, Sulla escaped from
+Rome to the army of which he was selected as General, and proceeded to
+Athens and the East with the object of conquering Mithridates; for,
+during these personal contests, the command of this expedition had been
+the chief bone of contention among them. Marius, who was by age
+unfitted, desired to obtain it in order that Sulla might not have it. In
+the next year, 86 B.C., Marius died, being then Consul for the seventh
+time. Sulla was away in the East, and did not return till 83 B.C. In the
+interval was that period of peace, fit for study, of which Cicero
+afterward spoke. "Triennium fere fuit urbs sine armis."[54] Cicero was
+then twenty-two or twenty-three years old, and must well have
+understood, from his remembrance of the Marian massacres, what it was to
+have the city embroiled by arms. It was not that men were fighting, but
+that they were simply being killed at the pleasure of the slaughterer.
+Then Sulla came back, 83 B.C., when Cicero was twenty-four; and if
+Marius had scourged the city with rods, he scourged it with scorpions.
+It was the city, in truth, that was scourged, and not simply the hostile
+faction. Sulla began by proscribing 520 citizens declaring that he had
+included in his list all that he remembered, and that those forgotten
+should be added on another day. The numbers were gradually raised to
+4,700! Nor did this merely mean that those named should be caught and
+killed by some miscalled officers of justice.[55] All the public was
+armed against the wretched, and any who should protect them were also
+doomed to death. This, however, might have been comparatively
+inefficacious to inflict the amount of punishment intended by Sulla. Men
+generally do not specially desire to imbrue their hands in the blood of
+other men. Unless strong hatred be at work, the ordinary man, even the
+ordinary Roman, will hardly rise up and slaughter another for the sake
+of the employment. But if lucre be added to blood, then blood can be
+made to flow copiously. This was what Sulla did. Not only was the
+victim's life proscribed, but his property was proscribed also; and the
+man who busied himself in carrying out the great butcher's business
+assiduously, ardently, and unintermittingly, was rewarded by the
+property so obtained. Two talents[56] was to be the fee for mere
+assassination; but the man who knew how to carry on well the work of an
+informer could earn many talents. It was thus that fortunes were made in
+the last days of Sulla. It was not only those 520 who were named for
+killing. They were but the firstlings of the flock--the few victims
+selected before the real workmen understood how valuable a trade
+proscription and confiscation might be made. Plutarch tells us how a
+quiet gentleman walking, as was his custom, in the Forum, one who took
+no part in politics, saw his own name one day on the list. He had an
+Alban villa, and at once knew that his villa had been his ruin. He had
+hardly read the list, and had made his exclamation, before he was
+slaughtered. Such was the massacre of Sulla, coming with an interval of
+two or three years after those of Marius, between which was the blessed
+time in which Rome was without arms. In the time of Marius, Cicero was
+too young, and of no sufficient importance, on account of his birth or
+parentage, to fear anything. Nor is it probable that Marius would have
+turned against his townsmen. When Sulla's turn came, Cicero, though not
+absolutely connected with the Dictator, was, so to say, on his side in
+politics. In going back even to this period we may use the terms
+Liberals and Conservatives for describing the two parties. Marius was
+for the people; that is to say, he was opposed to the rule of the
+oligarchy, dispersed the Senate, and loved to feel that his own feet
+were on the necks of the nobility. Of liberty, or rights, or popular
+institutions he recked nothing; but not the less was he supposed to be
+on the people's side. Sulla, on the other hand, had been born a
+patrician, and affected to preserve the old traditions of oligarchic
+rule; and, indeed, though he took all the power of the State into his
+own hands, he did restore, and for a time preserve, these old
+traditions. It must be presumed that there was at his heart something of
+love for old Rome. The proscriptions began toward the end of the year 82
+B.C., and were continued through eight or nine fearful months--up to the
+beginning of June, 81 B.C. A day was fixed at which there should be no
+more slaughtering--no more slaughtering, that is, without special order
+in each case, and no more confiscation--except such as might be judged
+necessary by those who had not as yet collected their prey from past
+victims. Then Sulla, as Dictator, set himself to work to reorganize the
+old laws. There should still be Consuls and Praetors, but with restricted
+powers, lessened almost down to nothing. It seems hard to gather what
+was exactly the Dictator's scheme as the future depositary of power when
+he should himself have left the scene. He did increase the privileges of
+the Senate; but thinking of the Senate of Rome as he must have thought
+of it, esteeming those old men as lowly as he must have esteemed them,
+he could hardly have intended that imperial power should be maintained
+by dividing it among them. He certainly contemplated no follower to
+himself, no heir to his power, as Caesar did. When he had been
+practically Dictator about three years--though he did not continue the
+use of the objectionable name--he resigned his rule and walked down, as
+it were, from his throne into private life. I know nothing in history
+more remarkable than Sulla's resignation; and yet the writers who have
+dealt with his name give no explanation of it. Plutarch, his biographer,
+expresses wonder that he should have been willing to descend to private
+life, and that he who made so many enemies should have been able to do
+so with security. Cicero says nothing of it. He had probably left Rome
+before it occurred, and did not return till after Sulla's death. It
+seems to have been accepted as being in no especial way remarkable.[57]
+At his own demand, the plenary power of Dictator had been given to
+him--power to do all as he liked, without reference either to the Senate
+or to the people, and with an added proviso that he should keep it as
+long as he thought fit, and lay it down when it pleased him. He did lay
+it down, flattering himself, probably, that, as he had done his work, he
+would walk out from his dictatorship like some Camillus of old. There
+had been no Dictator in Rome for more than a century and a quarter--not
+since the time of Hannibal's great victories; and the old dictatorships
+lasted but for a few months or weeks, after which the Dictator, having
+accomplished the special task, threw up his office. Sulla now affected
+to do the same; and Rome, after the interval of three years, accepted
+the resignation in the old spirit. It was natural to them, though only
+by tradition, that a Dictator should resign--so natural that it required
+no special wonder. The salt of the Roman Constitution was gone, but the
+remembrance of the savor of it was still sweet to the minds of the
+Romans.
+
+It seems certain that no attempt was made to injure Sulla when he ceased
+to be nominally at the head of the army, but it is probable that he did
+not so completely divest himself of power as to be without protection.
+In the year after his abdication he died, at the age of sixty-one,
+apparently strong as regards general health, but, if Plutarch's story be
+true, affected with a terrible cutaneous disease. Modern writers have
+spoken of Sulla as though they would fain have praised him if they
+dared, because, in spite of his demoniac cruelty, he recognized the
+expediency of bringing the affairs of the Republic again into order.
+Middleton calls him the "only man in history in whom the odium of the
+most barbarous cruelties was extinguished by the glory of his great
+acts." Mommsen, laying the blame of the proscriptions on the head of the
+oligarchy, speaks of Sulla as being either a sword or a pen in the
+service of the State, as a sword or a pen would be required, and
+declares that, in regard to the total "absence of political
+selfishness--although it is true in this respect only--Sulla deserves to
+be named side by side with Washington."[58] To us at present who are
+endeavoring to investigate the sources and the nature of Cicero's
+character, the attributes of this man would be but of little moment,
+were it not that Cicero was probably Cicero because Sulla had been
+Sulla. Horrid as the proscriptions and confiscations were to Cicero--and
+his opinion of them was expressed plainly enough when it was dangerous
+to express them[59]--still it was apparent to him that the cause of
+order (what we may call the best chance for the Republic) lay with the
+Senate and with the old traditions and laws of Rome, in the
+re-establishment of which Sulla had employed himself. Of these
+institutions Mommsen speaks with a disdain which we now cannot but feel
+to be justified. "On the Roman oligarchy of this period," he says "no
+judgment can be passed save one of inexorable and remorseless
+condemnation; and, like everything connected with it, the Sullan
+constitution is involved in that condemnation."[60] We have to admit
+that the salt had gone out from it, and that there was no longer left
+any savor by which it could be preserved. But the German historian seems
+to err somewhat in this, as have also some modern English historians,
+that they have not sufficiently seen that the men of the day had not the
+means of knowing all that they, the historians, know. Sulla and his
+Senate thought that by massacring the Marian faction they had restored
+everything to an equilibrium. Sulla himself seems to have believed that
+when the thing was accomplished Rome would go on, and grow in power and
+prosperity as she had grown, without other reforms than those which he
+had initiated. There can be no doubt that many of the best in Rome--the
+best in morals, the best in patriotism, and the best in erudition--did
+think that, with the old forms, the old virtue would come back. Pompey
+thought so, and Cicero. Cato thought so, and Brutus. Caesar, when he came
+to think about it, thought the reverse. But even now to us, looking back
+with so many things made clear to us, with all the convictions which
+prolonged success produces, it is doubtful whether some other milder
+change--some such change as Cicero would have advocated--might not have
+prevented the tyranny of Augustus, the mysteries of Tiberius, the freaks
+of Caligula, the folly of Claudius, and the madness of Nero.
+
+It is an uphill task, that of advocating the cause of a man who has
+failed. The Caesars of the world are they who make interesting stories.
+That Cicero failed in the great purpose of his life has to be
+acknowledged. He had studied the history of his country, and was aware
+that hitherto the world had produced nothing so great as Roman power;
+and he knew that Rome had produced true patriotism. Her Consuls, her
+Censors, her Tribunes, and her Generals had, as a rule, been true to
+Rome, serving their country, at any rate till of late years, rather than
+themselves. And he believed that liberty had existed in Rome, though
+nowhere else. It would be well if we could realize the idea of liberty
+which Cicero entertained. Liberty was very dear to him--dear to him not
+only as enjoying it himself, but as a privilege for the enjoyment of
+others. But it was only the liberty of a few. Half the population of the
+Roman cities were slaves, and in Cicero's time the freedom of the city,
+which he regarded as necessary to liberty, belonged only to a small
+proportion of the population of Italy. It was the liberty of a small
+privileged class for which he was anxious. That a Sicilian should be
+free under a Roman Proconsul, as a Roman citizen was entitled to be, was
+abhorrent to his doctrine. The idea of cosmopolitan freedom--an idea
+which exists with us, but is not common to very many even now--had not
+as yet been born: that care for freedom which springs from a desire to
+do to others as we would that they should do to us. It required Christ
+to father that idea; and Cicero, though he was nearer to Christianity
+than any who had yet existed, had not reached it. But this liberty,
+though it was but of a few, was so dear to him that he spent his life in
+an endeavor to preserve it. The kings had been expelled from Rome
+because they had trampled on liberty. Then came the Republic, which we
+know to have been at its best no more than an oligarchy; but still it
+was founded on the idea that everything should be done by the votes of
+the free people. For many years everything was done by the votes of the
+free people. Under what inducements they had voted is another question.
+Clients were subject to their patrons, and voted as they were told. We
+have heard of that even in England, where many of us still think that
+such a way of voting is far from objectionable. Perhaps compulsion was
+sometimes used--a sort of "rattening" by which large bodies were driven
+to the poll to carry this or the other measure. Simple eloquence
+prevailed with some, and with others flattery. Then corruption became
+rampant, as was natural, the rich buying the votes of the poor; and
+votes were bought in various ways--by cheap food as well as by money, by
+lavish expenditure in games, by promises of land, and other means of
+bribery more or less overt. This was bad, of course. Every freeman
+should have given a vote according to his conscience. But in what
+country--the millennium not having arrived in any--has this been
+achieved? Though voting in England has not always been pure, we have not
+wished to do away with the votes of freemen and to submit everything to
+personal rule. Nor did Cicero.
+
+He knew that much was bad, and had himself seen many things that were
+very evil. He had lived through the dominations of Marius and Sulla, and
+had seen the old practices of Roman government brought down to the
+pretence of traditional forms. But still, so he thought, there was life
+left in the old forms, if they could be revivified by patriotism, labor,
+and intelligence. It was the best that he could imagine for the
+State--infinitely better than the chance of falling into the bloody
+hands of one Marius and one Sulla after another. Mommsen tells us that
+nothing could be more rotten than the condition of oligarchical
+government into which Rome had fallen; and we are inclined to agree with
+Mommsen, because we have seen what followed. But that Cicero, living and
+seeing it all as a present spectator, should have hoped better things,
+should not, I think, cause us to doubt either Cicero's wisdom or his
+patriotism. I cannot but think that, had I been a Roman of those days, I
+should have preferred Cicero, with his memories of the past, to Caesar,
+with his ambition for the future.
+
+Looking back from our standing-point of to-day, we know how great Rome
+was--infinitely greater, as far as power is concerned, than anything
+else which the world has produced. It came to pass that "Urbis et orbis"
+was not a false boast. Gradually growing from the little nest of robbers
+established on the banks of the Tiber, the people of Rome learned how to
+spread their arms over all the known world, and to conquer and rule,
+while they drew to themselves all that the ingenuity and industry of
+other people had produced. To do this, there must have been not only
+courage and persistence, but intelligence, patriotism, and superior
+excellence in that art of combination of which government consists. But
+yet, when we look back, it is hard to say when were the palmy days of
+Rome. When did those virtues shine by which her power was founded? When
+was that wisdom best exhibited from which came her capacity for ruling?
+Not in the time of her early kings, whose mythic virtues, if they
+existed, were concerned but in small matters; for the Rome of the kings
+claimed a jurisdiction extending as yet but a few miles from the city.
+And from the time of their expulsion, Rome, though she was rising in
+power, was rising slowly, and through such difficulties that the reader
+of history, did he not know the future, would think from time to time
+that the day of her destruction had come upon her. Not when Brennus was
+at Rome with his Gauls, a hundred and twenty-five years after the
+expulsion of the kings, could Rome be said to have been great; nor when,
+fifty or sixty years afterward, the Roman army--the only army which Rome
+then possessed--had to lay down its arms in the Caudine Forks and pass
+under the Samnite yoke. Then, when the Samnite wars were ended, and Rome
+was mistress in Italy--mistress, after all, of no more than Southern
+Italy--the Punic wars began. It could hardly have been during that long
+contest with Carthage, which was carried on for nearly fifty years, that
+the palmy days of Rome were at their best. Hannibal seems always to be
+the master. Trebia, Thrasymene and Cannae, year after year, threaten
+complete destruction to the State. Then comes the great Scipio; and no
+doubt, if we must mark an era of Roman greatness, it would be that of
+the battle of Zama and the submission of Carthage, 201 years before
+Christ. But with Scipio there springs up the idea of personal ambition;
+and in the Macedonian and Greek wars that follow, though the arm of Rome
+is becoming stronger every day, and her shoulders broader, there is
+already the glamour of her decline in virtue. Her dealings with
+Antiochus, with Pyrrhus, and with the Achaeans, though successful, were
+hardly glorious. Then came the two Gracchi, and the reader begins to
+doubt whether the glory of the Republic is not already over. They
+demanded impossible reforms, by means as illegal as they were
+impossible, and were both killed in popular riots. The war with Jugurtha
+followed, in which the Romans were for years unsuccessful, and during
+which German hordes from the north rushed into Gaul and destroyed an
+army of 80,000 Romans. This brings us to Marius and to Sulla, of whom we
+have already spoken, and to that period of Roman politics which the
+German historian describes as being open to no judgment "save one of
+inexorable and remorseless condemnation."
+
+But, in truth, the history of every people and every nation will be
+subject to the same criticism, if it be regarded with the same severity.
+In all that man has done as yet in the way of government, the seeds of
+decay are apparent when looked back upon from an age in advance. The
+period of Queen Elizabeth was very great to us; yet by what dangers were
+we enveloped in her days! But for a storm at sea, we might have been
+subjected to Spain. By what a system of falsehood and petty tyrannies
+were we governed through the reigns of James I. and Charles I.! What
+periods of rottenness and danger there have been since! How little
+glorious was the reign of Charles II.! how full of danger that of
+William! how mean those of the four Georges, with the dishonesty of
+ministers such as Walpole and Newcastle! And to-day, are there not many
+who are telling us that we are losing the liberties which our
+forefathers got for us, and that no judgment can be passed on us "save
+one of inexorable and remorseless condemnation?" We are a great nation,
+and the present threatenings are probably vain. Nevertheless, the seeds
+of decay are no doubt inherent in our policies and our practices--so
+manifestly inherent that future historians will pronounce upon them with
+certainty.
+
+But Cicero, not having the advantage of distance, having simply in his
+mind the knowledge of the greatness which had been achieved, and in his
+heart a true love for the country which had achieved it, and which was
+his own, encouraged himself to think that the good might be recovered
+and the bad eliminated. Marius and Sulla--Pompey also, toward the end of
+his career, if I can read his character rightly--Caesar, and of course
+Augustus, being all destitute of scruple, strove to acquire, each for
+himself, the power which the weak hands of the Senate were unable to
+grasp. However much, or however little, the country of itself might have
+been to any of them, it seemed good to him, whether for the country's
+sake or for his own, that the rule should be in his own hands. Each had
+the opportunity, and each used it, or tried to use it. With Cicero there
+is always present the longing to restore the power to the old
+constitutional possessors of it. So much is admitted, even by his bitter
+enemies; and I am sometimes at a loss whether to wonder most that a man
+of letters, dead two thousand years ago, should have enemies so bitter
+or a friend so keenly in earnest about him as I am. Cicero was aware
+quite as well as any who lived then, if he did not see the matter
+clearer even than any others, that there was much that was rotten in the
+State. Men who had been murderers on behalf of Marius, and then others
+who had murdered on behalf of Sulla--among whom that Catiline, of whom
+we have to speak presently, had been one--were not apt to settle
+themselves down as quiet citizens. The laws had been set aside. Even the
+law courts had been closed. Sulla had been law, and the closets of his
+favorites had been the law courts. Senators had been cowed and obedient.
+The Tribunes had only been mock Tribunes. Rome, when Cicero began his
+public life, was still trembling. The Consuls of the day were men chosen
+at Sulla's command. The army was Sulla's army. The courts were now again
+opened by Sulla's permission. The day fixed by Sulla when murderers
+might no longer murder--or, at any rate, should not be paid for
+murdering--had arrived. There was not, one would say, much hope for good
+things. But Sulla had reproduced the signs of order, and the best hope
+lay in that direction. Consuls, Praetors, Quaestors, AEdiles, even
+Tribunes, were still there. Perhaps it might be given to him, to Cicero,
+to strengthen the hands of such officers. At any rate, there was no
+better course open to him by which he could serve his country.
+
+The heaviest accusation brought against Cicero charges him with being
+insincere to the various men with whom he was brought in contact in
+carrying out the purpose of his life, and he has also been accused of
+having changed his purpose. It has been alleged that, having begun life
+as a democrat, he went over to the aristocracy as soon as he had secured
+his high office of State. As we go on, it will be my object to show that
+he was altogether sincere in his purpose, that he never changed his
+political idea, and that, in these deviations as to men and as to means,
+whether, for instance, he was ready to serve Caesar or to oppose him, he
+was guided, even in the insincerity of his utterances, by the sincerity
+of his purpose. I think that I can remember, even in Great Britain, even
+in the days of Queen Victoria, men sitting check by jowl on the same
+Treasury bench who have been very bitter to each other with anything but
+friendly words. With us fidelity in friendship is, happily, a virtue. In
+Rome expediency governed everything. All I claim for Cicero is, that he
+was more sincere than others around him.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+_HIS EARLY PLEADINGS.--SEXTUS ROSCIUS AMERINUS.--HIS INCOME._
+
+
+[Sidenote: B.C. 80, aetat. 27.]
+
+We now come to the beginning of the work of Cicero's life. This at first
+consisted in his employment as an advocate, from which he gradually rose
+into public or political occupation, as so often happens with a
+successful barrister in our time. We do not know with absolute certainty
+even in what year Cicero began his pleadings, or in what cause. It may
+probably have been in 81 B.C., when he was twenty-five, or in his
+twenty-sixth year. Of the pleadings of which we know the particulars,
+that in the defence of Sextus Roscius Amerinus, which took place
+undoubtedly in the year 80 B.C., aetat twenty-seven, was probably the
+earliest. As to that, we have his speech nearly entire, as we have also
+one for Publius Quintius, which has generally been printed first among
+the orator's works. It has, however, I think, been made clear that that
+spoken for Sextus Roscius came before it. It is certain that there had
+been others before either of them. In that for Sextus he says that he
+had never spoken before in any public cause,[61] such as was the
+accusation in which he was now engaged, from which the inference has to
+be made that he had been engaged in private causes; and in that for
+Quintius he declares that there was wanting to him in that matter an aid
+which he had been accustomed to enjoy in others.[62] No doubt he had
+tried his 'prentice hand in cases of less importance. That of these two
+the defence of Sextus Roscius came first, is also to be found in his own
+words. More than once, in pleading for Quintius, he speaks of the
+proscriptions and confiscations of Sulla as evils then some time past.
+These were brought nominally to a close in June, 81; but it has been
+supposed by those who have placed this oration first that it was spoken
+in that very year. This seems to have been impossible. "I am most
+unwilling," says he, "to call to mind that subject, the very memory of
+which should be wiped out from our thoughts."[63] When the tone of the
+two speeches is compared, it will become evident that that for Sextus
+Roscius was spoken the first. It was, as I have said, spoken in his
+twenty-seventh year, B.C. 80, the year after the proscription lists had
+been closed, when Sulla was still Dictator, and when the sales of
+confiscated goods, though no longer legal, were still carried on under
+assumed authority. As to such violation of Sulla's own enactment, Cicero
+excuses the Dictator in this very speech, likening him to Great Jove the
+Thunderer. Even "Jupiter Optimus Maximus," as he is whose nod the
+heavens, the earth, and seas obey--even he cannot so look after his
+numerous affairs but that the winds and the storms will be too strong
+sometimes, or the heat too great, or the cold too bitter. If so, how can
+we wonder that Sulla, who has to rule the State, to govern, in fact, the
+world, should not be able himself to see to everything? Jove probably
+found it convenient not to see many things. Such must certainly have
+been the case with Sulla.
+
+I will venture, as other biographers have done before, to tell the story
+of Sextus Roscius of Ameria at some length, because it is in itself a
+tale of powerful romance, mysterious, grim, betraying guilt of the
+deepest dye, misery most profound, and audacity unparalleled; because,
+in a word, it is as interesting as any novel that modern fiction has
+produced; and also, I will tell it, because it lets in a flood of light
+upon the condition of Rome at the time. Our hair is made to stand on end
+when we remember that men had to pick their steps in such a State as
+this, and to live if it were possible, and, if not, then to be ready to
+die. We come in upon the fag-end of the proscription, and see, not the
+bloody wreath of Sulla as he triumphed on his Marian foes, not the cruel
+persecution of the ruler determined to establish his order of things by
+slaughtering every foe, but the necessary accompaniments of such
+ruthless deeds--those attendant villanies for which the Jupiter Optimus
+Maximus of the day had neither ears nor eyes. If in history we can ever
+get a glimpse at the real life of the people, it is always more
+interesting than any account of the great facts, however grand.
+
+The Kalends of June had been fixed by Sulla as the day on which the
+slaughter legalized by the proscriptions should cease. In the September
+following an old gentleman named Sextus Roscius was murdered in the
+streets of Rome as he was going home from supper one night, attended by
+two slaves. By whom he was murdered, probably more than one or two knew
+then, but nobody knows now. He was a man of reputation, well acquainted
+with the Metelluses and Messalas of the day, and passing rich. His name
+had been down on no proscription list, for he had been a friend of
+Sulla's friends. He was supposed, when he was murdered, to be worth
+about six million of sesterces, or something between fifty and sixty
+thousand pounds of our money. Though there was at that time much money
+in Rome, this amounted to wealth; and though we cannot say who murdered
+the man, we may feel sure that he was murdered for his money.
+
+Immediately on his death his chattels were seized and sold--or divided,
+probably, without being sold--including his slaves, in whom, as with
+every rich Roman, much of his wealth was invested; and his landed
+estates--his farms, of which he had many--were also divided. As to the
+actual way in which this was done, we are left much in the dark. Had the
+name of Sextus Roscius been on one of the lists, even though the list
+would then have been out of date, we could have understood that it
+should have been so. Jupiter Optimus Maximus could not see everything,
+and great advantages were taken. We must only suppose that things were
+so much out of order that they who had been accustomed to seize upon the
+goods of the proscribed were able to stretch their hands so as to grasp
+almost anything that came in their way. They could no longer procure a
+rich man's name to be put down on the list, but they could pretend that
+it had been put down. At any rate, certain persons seized and divided
+the chattels of the murdered man as though he had been proscribed.
+
+Old Roscius, when he was killed, had one son, of whom we are told that
+he lived always in the country at Ameria, looking after his father's
+farms, never visiting the capital, which was distant from Ameria
+something under fifty miles; a rough, uncouth, and probably honest
+man--one, at any rate, to whom the ways of the city were unknown, and
+who must have been but partially acquainted with the doings of the
+time.[64] As we read the story, we feel that very much depends on the
+character of this man, and we are aware that our only description of him
+comes from his own advocate. Cicero would probably say much which,
+though beyond the truth, could not be absolutely refuted, but would
+state as facts nothing that was absolutely false. Cicero describes him
+as a middle-aged man, who never left his farm, doing his duty well by
+his father, as whose agent he acted on the land--a simple, unambitious,
+ignorant man, to whom one's sympathies are due rather than our
+antipathy, because of his devotion to agriculture. He was now accused of
+having murdered his father. The accusation was conducted by one Erucius,
+who in his opening speech--the speech made before that by Cicero--had
+evidently spoken ill of rural employments. Then Cicero reminds him, and
+the judges, and the Court how greatly agriculture had been honored in
+the old days, when Consuls were taken from the ploughs. The imagination,
+however, of the reader pictures to itself a man who could hardly have
+been a Consul at any time--one silent, lonely, uncouth, and altogether
+separate from the pleasant intercourses of life. Erucius had declared of
+him that he never took part in any festivity. Cicero uses this to show
+that he was not likely to have been tempted by luxury to violence. Old
+Roscius had had two sons, of whom he had kept one with him in Rome--the
+one, probably, whose society had been dearest to him. He, however, had
+died, and our Roscius--Sextus Roscius Amerinus, as he came to be called
+when he was made famous by the murder--was left on one of the farms down
+in the country. The accusation would probably not have been made, had he
+not been known to be a man sullen, silent, rough, and unpopular--as to
+whom such a murder might be supposed to be credible.
+
+Why should any accusation have been made unless there was clear evidence
+as to guilt? That is the first question which presents itself. This son
+received no benefit from his father's death. He had in fact been
+absolutely beggared by it--had lost the farm, the farming utensils,
+every slave in the place, all of which had belonged to his father, and
+not to himself. They had been taken, and divided; taken by persons
+called "Sectores," informers or sequestrators, who took possession of
+and sold--or did not sell--confiscated goods. Such men in this case had
+pounced down upon the goods of the murdered man at once and swallowed
+them all up, not leaving an acre or a slave to our Roscius. Cicero tells
+us who divided the spoil among them. There were two other Rosciuses,
+distant relatives, probably, both named Titus; Titus Roscius Magnus, who
+sojourned in Rome, and who seems to have exercised the trade of informer
+and assassin during the proscriptions, and Titus Roscius Capito, who,
+when at home, lived at Ameria, but of whom Cicero tells us that he had
+become an apt pupil of the other during this affair. They had got large
+shares, but they shared also with one Chrysogonus, the freedman and
+favorite of Sulla, who did the dirty work for Jupiter Optimus Maximus
+when Jupiter Optimus Maximus had not time to do it himself. We presume
+that Chrysogonus had the greater part of the plunder. As to Capito, the
+apt pupil, we are told again and again that he got three farms for
+himself.
+
+Again, it is necessary to say that all these facts come from Cicero,
+who, in accordance with the authorized practice of barristers, would
+scruple at saying nothing which he found in his instructions. How
+instructions were conveyed to an advocate in those days we do not quite
+know. There was no system of attorneys. But the story was probably made
+out for the "patronus" or advocate by an underling, and in some way
+prepared for him. That which was thus prepared he exaggerated as the
+case might seem to require. It has to be understood of Cicero that he
+possessed great art and, no doubt, great audacity in such exaggeration;
+in regard to which we should certainly not bear very heavily upon him
+now, unless we are prepared to bear more heavily upon those who do the
+same thing in our own enlightened days. But Cicero, even as a young man,
+knew his business much too well to put forward statements which could be
+disproved. The accusation came first; then the speech in defence; after
+that the evidence, which was offered only on the side of the accuser,
+and which was subject to cross-examination. Cicero would have no
+opportunity of producing evidence. He was thus exempted from the
+necessity of proving his statements, but was subject to have them all
+disproved. I think we may take it for granted that the property of the
+murdered man was divided as he tells us.
+
+If that was so, why should any accusation have been made? Our Sextus
+seems to have been too much crushed by the dangers of his position to
+have attempted to get back any part of his father's wealth. He had
+betaken himself to the protection of a certain noble lady, one Metella,
+whose family had been his father's friends, and by her and her friends
+the defence was no doubt managed. "You have my farms," he is made to say
+by his advocate; "I live on the charity of another. I abandon everything
+because I am placid by nature, and because it must be so. My house,
+which is closed to me, is open to you: I endure it. You have possessed
+yourself of my whole establishment; I have not one single slave. I
+suffer all this, and feel that I must suffer it. What do you want more?
+Why do you persecute me further? In what do you think that I shall hurt
+you? How do I interfere with you? In what do I oppose you? Is it your
+wish to kill a man for the sake of plunder? You have your plunder. If
+for the sake of hatred, what hatred can you feel against him of whose
+land you have taken possession before you had even known him?"[65] Of
+all this, which is the advocate's appeal to pity, we may believe as
+little as we please. Cicero is addressing the judge, and desires only an
+acquittal. But the argument shows that no overt act in quest of
+restitution had as yet been made. Nevertheless, Chrysogonus feared such
+action, and had arranged with the two Tituses that something should be
+done to prevent it. What are we to think of the condition of a city in
+which not only could a man be murdered for his wealth walking home from
+supper--that, indeed, might happen in London if there existed the means
+of getting at the man's money when the man was dead--but in which such a
+plot could be concerted in order that the robbery might be consummated?
+"We have murdered the man and taken his money under the false plea that
+his goods had been confiscated. Friends, we find, are interfering--these
+Metellas and Metelluses, probably. There is a son who is the natural
+heir. Let us say that he killed his own father. The courts of law, which
+have only just been reopened since the dear days of proscription,
+disorder, and confiscation, will hardly yet be alert enough to acquit a
+man in opposition to the Dictator's favorite. Let us get him convicted,
+and, as a parricide, sewed up alive in a bag and thrown into the
+river"--as some of us have perhaps seen cats drowned, for such was the
+punishment--"and then he at least will not disturb us." It must have
+thus been that the plot was arranged.
+
+It was a plot so foul that nothing could be fouler; but not the less was
+it carried out persistently with the knowledge and the assistance of
+many. Erucius, the accuser, who seems to have been put forward on the
+part of Chrysogonus, asserted that the man had caused his father to be
+murdered because of hatred. The father was going to disinherit the son,
+and therefore the son murdered the father. In this there might have been
+some probability, had there been any evidence of such an intention on
+the father's part. But there was none. Cicero declares that the father
+had never thought of disinheriting his son. There had been no quarrel,
+no hatred. This had been assumed as a reason--falsely. There was in
+fact no cause for such a deed; nor was it possible that the son should
+have done it. The father was killed in Rome when, as was evident, the
+son was fifty miles off. He never left his farm. Erucius, the accuser,
+had said, and had said truly, that Rome was full of murderers.[66] But
+who was the most likely to have employed such a person: this rough
+husbandman, who had no intercourse with Rome, who knew no one there, who
+knew little of Roman ways, who had nothing to get by the murder when
+committed, or they who had long been concerned with murderers, who knew
+Rome, and who were now found to have the property in their hands?
+
+The two slaves who had been with the old man when he was killed, surely
+they might tell something? Here there comes out incidentally the fact
+that slaves when they were examined as witnesses were tortured, quite as
+a matter of course, so that their evidence might be extracted. This is
+spoken of with no horror by Cicero, nor, as far as I can remember, by
+other Roman writers. It was regarded as an established rule of life that
+a slave, if brought into a court of law, should be made to tell the
+truth by such appliances. This was so common that one is tempted to
+hope, and almost to suppose that the "question" was not ordinarily
+administered with circumstances of extreme cruelty. We hear, indeed, of
+slaves having their liberty given them in order that, being free, they
+may not be forced by torture to tell the truth;[67] but had the cruelty
+been of the nature described by Scott in "Old Mortality," when the poor
+preacher's limbs were mangled, I think we should have heard more of it.
+Nor was the torture always applied, but only when the expected evidence
+was not otherwise forth-coming. Cicero explains, in the little dialogue
+given below, how the thing was carried on.[68] "You had better tell the
+truth now, my friend: Was it so and so?" The slave knows that, if he
+says it was so, there is the cross for him, or the "little horse;" but
+that, if he will say the contrary, he will save his joints from racking.
+And yet the evidence went for what it was worth.
+
+In this case of Roscius there had certainly been two slaves present; but
+Cicero, who, as counsel for the defence, could call no witnesses, had
+not the power to bring them into court; nor could slaves have been made
+to give evidence against their masters. These slaves, who had belonged
+to the murdered man, were now the property either of Chrysogonus or of
+the two Tituses. There was no getting at their evidence but by
+permission of their masters, and this was withheld. Cicero demands that
+they shall be produced, knowing that the demand will have no effect.
+"The man here," he says, pointing to the accused, "asks for it, prays
+for it. What will you do in this case? Why do you refuse?"[69]
+
+By this time the reader is brought to feel that the accused person
+cannot possibly have been guilty; and if the reader, how much more the
+hearer? Then Cicero goes on to show who in truth were guilty. "Doubt now
+if you can, judges, by whom Roscius was killed: whether by him who, by
+his father's death, is plunged into poverty and trouble--who is
+forbidden even to investigate the truth--or by those who are afraid of
+real evidence, who themselves possess the plunder, who live in the midst
+of murder, and on the proceeds of murder."[70]
+
+Then he addresses one of the Tituses, Titus Magnus, who seems to have
+been sitting in the court, and who is rebuked for his impudence in doing
+so: "Who can doubt who was the murderer--you who have got all the
+plunder, or this man who has lost everything? But if it be added to this
+that you were a pauper before--that you have been known as a greedy
+fellow, as a dare-devil, as the avowed enemy of him who has been
+killed--then need one ask what has brought you to do such a deed as
+this?"[71]
+
+He next tells what took place, as far as it was known, immediately after
+the murder. The man had been killed coming home from supper, in
+September, after it was dark, say at eight or nine o'clock, and the fact
+was known in Ameria before dawn. Travelling was not then very quick; but
+a messenger, one Mallius Glaucia, a man on very close terms with Titus
+Magnus, was sent down at once in a light gig to travel through the night
+and take the information to Titus Capito Why was all this hurry? How did
+Glaucia hear of the murder so quickly? What cause to travel all through
+the night? Why was it necessary that Capito should know all about it at
+once? "I cannot think," says Cicero, "only that I see that Capito has
+got three of the farms out of the thirteen which the murdered man
+owned!" But Capito is to be produced as a witness, and Cicero gives us
+to understand what sort of cross-examination he will have to undergo.
+
+In all this the reader has to imagine much, and to come to conclusions
+as to facts of which he has no evidence. When that hurried messenger was
+sent, there was probably no idea of accusing the son. The two real
+contrivers of the murder would have been more on their guard had they
+intended such a course. It had been conceived that when the man was dead
+and his goods seized, the fear of Sulla's favorite, the still customary
+dread of the horrors of the time, would cause the son to shrink from
+inquiry. Hitherto, when men had been killed and their goods taken, even
+if the killing and the taking had not been done strictly in accordance
+with Sulla's ordinance, it had been found safer to be silent and to
+endure; but this poor wretch, Sextus, had friends in Rome--friends who
+were friends of Sulla--of whom Chrysogonus and the Tituses had probably
+not bethought themselves. When it came to pass that more stir was made
+than they had expected, then the accusation became necessary.
+
+But, in order to obtain the needed official support and aid, Chrysogonus
+must be sought. Sulla was then at Volaterra, in Etruria perhaps 150
+miles north-west from Rome, and with him was his favorite Chrysogonus.
+In four days from the time of this murder the news was earned thither,
+and, so Cicero states, by the same messenger--by Glaucia--who had taken
+it to Ameria. Chrysogonus immediately saw to the selling of the goods,
+and from this Cicero implies that Chrysogonus and the two Tituses were
+in partnership.
+
+But it seems that when the fact of the death of old Roscius was known at
+Ameria--at which place he was an occasional resident himself, and the
+most conspicuous man in the place--the inhabitants, struck with horror,
+determined to send a deputation to Sulla. Something of what was being
+done with their townsman's property was probably known, and there seems
+to have been a desire for justice. Ten townsmen were chosen to go to
+Sulla, and to beg that he would personally look into the matter. Here,
+again, we are very much in the dark, because this very Capito, to whom
+these farms were allotted as his share, was not only chosen to be one of
+the ten, but actually became their spokesman and their manager. The
+great object was to keep Sulla himself in the dark, and this Capito
+managed to do by the aid of Chrysogonus. None of the ten were allowed to
+see Sulla. They are hoaxed into believing that Chrysogonus himself will
+look to it, and so they go back to Ameria, having achieved nothing. We
+are tempted to believe that the deputation was a false deputation, each
+of whom probably had his little share, so that in this way there might
+be an appearance of justice. If it was so, Cicero has not chosen to tell
+that part of the story, having, no doubt, some good advocate's reason
+for omitting it.
+
+So far the matter had gone with the Tituses, and with Chrysogonus who
+had got his lion's share. Our poor Roscius, the victim, did at first
+abandon his property, and allow himself to be awed into silence. We
+cannot but think that he was a poor creature, and can fancy that he had
+lived a wretched life during all the murders of the Sullan
+proscriptions. But in his abject misery he had found his way up among
+the great friends of his family at Rome, and had there been charged with
+the parricide, because Chrysogonus and the Tituses began to be afraid of
+what these great friends might do.
+
+This is the story as Cicero has been able to tell it in his speech.
+Beyond that, we only know that the man was acquitted. Whether he got
+back part of his father's property there is nothing to inform us.
+Whether further inquiry was made as to the murder; whether evil befell
+those two Tituses or Chrysogonus was made to disgorge, there has been no
+one to inform us. The matter was of little importance in Rome, where
+murders and organized robberies of the kind were the common incidents of
+every-day life. History would have meddled with nothing so ordinary had
+not it happened that the case fell into the hands of a man so great a
+master of his language that it has been worth the while of ages to
+perpetuate the speech which he made in the matter. But the story, as a
+story of Roman life, is interesting, and it gives a slight aid to
+history in explaining the condition of things which Sulla had produced.
+
+The attack upon Chrysogonus is bold, and cannot but have been offensive
+to Sulla, though Sulla is by name absolved from immediate blame.
+Chrysogonus himself, the favorite, he does not spare, saying words so
+bitter of tone that one would think that the judges--Sulla's
+judges--would have stopped him, had they been able. "Putting aside
+Sextus Roscius," he says, "I demand, first of all, why the goods of an
+esteemed citizen were sold; then, why have the goods been sold of one
+who had not himself been proscribed, and who had not been killed while
+defending Sulla's enemies? It is against those only that the law is
+made. Then I demand why they were sold when the legal day for such sales
+had passed, and why they were sold for such a trifle."[72] Then he gives
+us a picture of Chrysogonus flaunting down the streets. "You have seen
+him, judges, how, his locks combed and perfumed, he swims along the
+Forum"--he, a freedman, with a crowd of Roman citizens at his heels,
+that all may see that he thinks himself inferior to none--"the only
+happy man of the day, the only one with any power in his hands."[73]
+
+This trial was, as has been said, a "causa publica," a criminal
+accusation of such importance as to demand that it should be tried
+before a full bench of judges. Of these the number would be uncertain,
+but they were probably above fifty. The Praetor of the day--the Praetor to
+whom by lot had fallen for that year that peculiar duty--presided, and
+the judges all sat round him. Their duty seems to have consisted in
+listening to the pleadings, and then in voting. Each judge could
+vote[74] "guilty," "acquitted," or "not proven," as they do in Scotland.
+They were, in fact, jurymen rather than judges. It does not seem that
+any amount of legal lore was looked for specially in the judges, who at
+different periods had been taken from various orders of the citizens,
+but who at this moment, by a special law enacted by Sulla, were selected
+only from the Senators. We have ample evidence that at this period the
+judges in Rome were most corrupt. They were tainted by a double
+corruption: that of standing by their order instead of standing by the
+public--each man among them feeling that his turn to be accused might
+come--and that also of taking direct bribes. Cicero on various
+occasions--on this, for instance, and notably in the trial of Verres, to
+which we shall come soon--felt very strongly that his only means of
+getting a true verdict from the majority of judges was to frighten them
+into temporary honesty by the magnitude of the occasion. If a trial
+could be slurred through with indifferent advocates, with nothing to
+create public notice, with no efforts of genius to attract admiration,
+and a large attendance and consequent sympathy the judgment would, as a
+matter of course, be bought. In such a case as this of Sextus Roscius,
+the poor wretch would be condemned, sewed up in his bag, and thrown into
+the sea, a portion of the plunder would be divided among the judges, and
+nothing further would be said about it. But if an orator could achieve
+for himself such a reputation that the world would come and listen to
+him, if he could so speak that Rome should be made to talk about the
+trial, then might the judges be frightened into a true verdict. It may
+be understood, therefore, of what importance it was to obtain the
+services of a Cicero, or of a Hortensius, who was unrivalled at the
+Roman bar when Cicero began to plead.
+
+There were three special modes of oratory in which Cicero displayed his
+powers. He spoke either before the judges--a large body of judges who
+sat collected round the Praetor, as in the case of Sextus Roscius--or in
+cases of civil law before a single judge, selected by the Praetor, who
+sat with an assessor, as in the case of Roscius the actor, which shall
+be mentioned just now. This was the recognized work of his life, in
+which he was engaged, at any rate, in his earlier years; or he spoke to
+the populace, in what was called the Concio, or assembly of the
+people--speeches made before a crowd called together for a special
+purpose, as were the second and third orations against Catiline; or in
+the Senate, in which a political rather than a judicial sentence was
+sought from the votes of the Senators. There was a fourth mode of
+address, which in the days of the Emperors became common, when the
+advocate spoke "ad Principem;" that is, to the Emperor himself, or to
+some ruler acting for him as sole judge. It was thus that Cicero pleaded
+before Caesar for Ligarius and for King Deiotarus, in the latter years of
+his life. In each of these a separate manner and a distinct line had to
+be adopted, in all of which he seems to have been equally happy, and
+equally powerful. In judging of his speeches, we are bound to remember
+that they were not probably uttered with their words arranged as we read
+them. Some of those we have were never spoken at all, as was the case
+with the five last Verrene orations, and with the second, by far the
+longest of the Philippics. Some, as was specially the case with the
+defence of Milo, the language of which is perhaps as perfect as that of
+any oration which has reached us from ancient or modern days, were only
+spoken in part; so that that which we read bears but small relation to
+that which was heard. All were probably retouched for publication.[75]
+That words so perfect in their construction should have flowed from a
+man's mouth, often with but little preparation, we cannot conceive. But
+we know from the evidence of the day, and from the character which
+remained of him through after Roman ages, how great was the immediate
+effect of his oratory. We can imagine him, in this case of Sextus
+Roscius, standing out in the open air in the Forum, with the movable
+furniture of the court around him, the seats on which the judges sat
+with the Praetor in the midst of them, all Senators in their white robes,
+with broad purple borders. There too were seated, we may suppose on
+lower benches, the friends of the accused and the supporters of the
+accusation, and around, at the back of the orator, was such a crowd as
+he by the character of his eloquence may have drawn to the spot. Cicero
+was still a young man; but his name had made itself known and we can
+imagine that some tidings had got abroad as to the bold words which
+would be spoken in reference to Sulla and Chrysogonus. The scene must
+have been very different from that of one of our dingy courts, in which
+the ermine is made splendid only by the purity and learning of the man
+who wears it. In Rome all exterior gifts were there. Cicero knew how to
+use them, so that the judges who made so large a part in the pageant
+should not dare to disgrace themselves because of its publicity.
+Quintilian gives his pupils much advice as to the way in which they
+should dress themselves[76] and hold their togas--changing the folds of
+the garment so as to suit the different parts of the speech--how they
+should move their arms, and hold their heads, and turn their necks; even
+how they should comb their hair when they came to stand in public and
+plead at the bar. All these arts, with many changes, no doubt, as years
+rolled on, had come down to him from days before Cicero; but he always
+refers to Cicero as though his were the palmy days of Roman eloquence.
+We can well believe that Cicero had studied many of these arts by his
+twenty-seventh year--that he knew how to hold his toga and how to drop
+it--how to make the proper angle with his elbow--how to comb his hair,
+and yet not be a fop--and to add to the glory of his voice all the
+personal graces which were at his command.
+
+Sextus Roscius Amerinus, with all his misfortunes, injustices, and
+miseries, is now to us no more than the name of a fable; but to those
+who know it, the fable is, I think, more attractive than most novels.
+
+We know that Cicero pleaded other causes before he went to Greece in the
+year 79 B.C., especially those for Publius Quintius, of which we have
+his speech, and that for a lady of Arretium, in which he defended her
+right to be regarded as a free woman of that city. In this speech he
+again attacked Sulla, the rights of the lady in question having been
+placed in jeopardy by an enactment made by the Dictator; and again
+Cicero was successful. This is not extant. Then he started on his
+travels, as to which I have already spoken. While he was absent Sulla
+died, and the condition of the Republic during his absence was anything
+but hopeful. Lepidus was Consul during these two years, than whom no
+weaker officer ever held rule in Rome--or rebelled against Rome; and
+Sertorius, who was in truth a great man, was in arms against Rome in
+Spain, as a rebel, though he was in truth struggling to create a new
+Roman power, which should be purer than that existing in Italy. What
+Cicero thought of the condition of his country at this time we have no
+means of knowing. If he then wrote letters, they have not been
+preserved. His spoken words speak plainly enough of the condition of the
+courts of law, and let us know how resolved he was to oppose himself to
+their iniquities. A young man may devote himself to politics with as
+much ardor as a senior, but he cannot do so if he be intent on a
+profession. It is only when his business is so well grasped by him as to
+sit easily on him, that he is able to undertake the second occupation.
+
+There is a rumor that Cicero, when he returned home from Greece, thought
+for awhile of giving himself up to philosophy, so that he was called
+Greek and Sophist in ridicule. It is not, however, to be believed that
+he ever for a moment abandoned the purpose he had formed for his own
+career. It will become evident as we go on with his life, that this
+so-called philosophy of the Greeks was never to him a matter of more
+than interesting inquiry. A full, active, human life, in which he might
+achieve for himself all the charms of high rank, gilded by intelligence,
+erudition, and refined luxury, in which also he might serve his country,
+his order, and his friends--just such a life as our leading men propose
+to themselves here, to-day, in our country--this is what Cicero had
+determined to achieve from his earliest years, and it was not likely
+that he should be turned from it by the pseudo logic of Greek
+philosophers. That the logic even of the Academy was false to him we
+have ample evidence, not only in his life but in his writings. There is
+a story that, during his travels, he consulted the oracle at Delphi as
+to his future career, and that on being told that he must look to his
+own genius and not to the opinion of the world at large, he determined
+to abandon the honors of the Republic. That he should have talked among
+the young men of the day of his philosophic investigations till they
+laughed at him and gave him a nickname, may be probable, but it cannot
+have been that he ever thought of giving up the bar.
+
+In the year of his return to Rome, when he was thirty, he married
+Terentia, a noble lady, of whom we are informed that she had a good
+fortune, and that her sister was one of the Vestal Virgins.[77] Her
+nobility is inferred from the fact that the virgins were, as a rule,
+chosen from the noble families, though the law required only that they
+should be the daughters of free parents, and of persons engaged in no
+mean pursuits. As to the more important question of Terentia's fortune
+there has never been a doubt. Plutarch, however, does not make it out to
+have been very great, assuming a sum which was equal to about L4200 of
+our money. He tells us at the same time that Cicero's own fortune was
+less than L4000. But in both of these statements, Plutarch, who was
+forced to take his facts where he could get them, and was not very
+particular in his authority, probably erred. The early education of
+Cicero, and the care taken to provide him with all that money could
+purchase, is, I think, conclusive of his father's wealth; and the mode
+of life adopted by Cicero shows that at no period did he think it
+necessary to live as men do live with small incomes.
+
+We shall find, as we go on, that he spent his money freely, as men did
+at Rome who had the command of large means. We are aware that he was
+often in debt. We find that from his letters. But he owed money not as a
+needy man does, but as one who is speculative, sanguine, and quite
+confident of his own resources. The management of incomes was not so
+fixed a thing then as it is with us now. Speculation was even more
+rampant, and rising men were willing and were able to become indebted
+for enormous sums, having no security to offer but the promise of their
+future career. Caesar's debts during various times of his life were
+proverbial. He is said to have owed over L300,000 before he reached his
+first step in the public employment. Cicero rushed into no such danger
+as this. We know, indeed, that when the time came to him for public
+expenditure on a great scale, as, for instance, when he was filling the
+office of AEdile, he kept within bounds, and he did not lavish money
+which he did not possess. We know also that he refrained, altogether
+refrained, from the iniquitous habits of making large fortunes which
+were open to the great politicians of the Republic. To be Quaestor that
+he might be AEdile, AEdile that he might be Praetor and Consul, and Praetor
+and Consul that he might rob a province--pillage Sicily, Spain, or Asia,
+and then at last come back a rich man, rich enough to cope with all his
+creditors, and to bribe the judges should he be accused for his
+misdeeds--these were the usual steps to take by enterprising Romans
+toward power, wealth, and enjoyment. But it will be observed, in this
+sequence of circumstances, the robbery of the province was essential to
+success. This was sometimes done after so magnificent a fashion as to
+have become an immortal fact in history. The instance of Verres will be
+narrated in the next chapter but one. Something of moderation was more
+general, so that the fleeced provincial might still live, and prefer
+sufferance to the doubtful chances of recovery. A Proconsul might rob a
+great deal, and still return with hands apparently clean, bringing with
+him a score of provincial Deputies to laud his goodness before the
+citizens at home. But Cicero robbed not at all. Even they who have been
+most hard upon his name, accusing him of insincerity and sometimes of
+want of patriotism, because his Roman mode of declaring himself without
+reserve in his letters has been perpetuated for us by the excellence of
+their language, even they have acknowledged that he kept his hands
+studiously clean in the service of his country, when to have clean hands
+was so peculiar as to be regarded as absurd.
+
+There were other means in which a noble Roman might make money, and
+might do so without leaving the city. An orator might be paid for his
+services as an advocate. Cicero, had such a trade been opened to him,
+might have made almost any sum to which his imagination could have
+stretched itself. Such a trade was carried on to a very great extent. It
+was illegal, such payment having been forbidden by the "Lex Cincia De
+Muneribus," passed more than a century before Cicero began his
+pleadings.[78] But the law had become a dead letter in the majority of
+cases. There can be no doubt that Hortensius, the predecessor and great
+rival of Cicero, took presents, if not absolute payment. Indeed, the
+myth of honorary work, which is in itself absurd, was no more
+practicable in Rome than it has been found to be in England, where every
+barrister is theoretically presumed to work for nothing. That the "Lex
+Cincia," as far as the payment of advocates went, was absurd, may be
+allowed by us all. Services for which no regular payment can be exacted
+will always cost more than those which have a defined price. But Cicero
+would not break the law. It has been hinted rather than stated that he,
+like other orators of the day, had his price. He himself tells us that
+he took nothing; and no instance has been adduced that he had ever done
+so. He is free enough in accusing Hortensius of having accepted a
+beautiful statuette, an ivory sphinx of great value. What he knew of
+Hortensius, Hortensius would have known of him, had it been there to
+know; and what Hortensius or others had heard would certainly have been
+told. As far as we can learn, there is no ground for accusing Cicero of
+taking fees or presents beyond the probability that he would do so. I
+think we are justified in believing that he did not do so, because those
+who watched his conduct closely found no opportunity of exposing him.
+That he was paid by different allied States for undertaking their
+protection in the Senate, is probable, such having been a custom not
+illegal. We know that he was specially charged with the affairs of
+Dyrrachium, and had probably amicable relations with other allied
+communities. This, however, must have been later in life, when his name
+was sufficiently high to insure the value of his services, and when he
+was a Senator.
+
+Noble Romans also--noble as they were, and infinitely superior to the
+little cares of trade--were accustomed to traffic very largely in usury.
+We shall have a terrible example of such baseness on the part of
+Brutus--that Brutus whom we have been taught to regard as almost on a
+par with Cato in purity. To lend money to citizens, or more profitably
+to allied States and cities, at enormous rates of interest, was the
+ordinary resource of a Roman nobleman in quest of revenue. The allied
+city, when absolutely eaten to the bone by one noble Roman, who had
+plundered it as Proconsul or Governor, would escape from its immediate
+embarrassment by borrowing money from another noble Roman, who would
+then grind its very bones in exacting his interest and his principal.
+Cicero, in the most perfect of his works--the treatise De Officiis, an
+essay in which he instructs his son as to the way in which a man should
+endeavor to live so as to be a gentleman--inveighs both against trade
+and usury. When he tells us that they are to be accounted mean who buy
+in order that they may sell, we, with our later lights, do not quite
+agree with him, although he founds his assertion on an idea which is too
+often supported by the world's practice, namely, that men cannot do a
+retail business profitably without lying.[79] The doctrine, however, has
+always been common that retail trade is not compatible with noble
+bearing, and was practised by all Romans who aspired to be considered
+among the upper classes. That other and certainly baser means of making
+money by usury was, however, only too common. Crassus, the noted rich
+man of Rome in Caesar's day, who was one of the first Triumvirate, and
+who perished ignominiously in Parthia, was known to have gathered much
+of his wealth by such means. But against this Cicero is as staunchly
+severe as against shopkeeping. "First of all," he says, "these profits
+are despicable which incur the hatred of men, such as those of gatherers
+of custom and lenders of money on usury."[80]
+
+Again, we are entitled to say that Cicero did not condescend to enrich
+himself by the means which he himself condemns, because, had he done so,
+the accusations made against him by his contemporaries would have
+reached our ears. Nor is it probable that a man in addressing his son as
+to rules of life would have spoken against a method of gathering riches
+which, had he practised it himself, must have been known to his son. His
+rules were severe as compared with the habits of the time. His dear
+friend Atticus did not so govern his conduct, or Brutus, who, when he
+wrote the De Officiis, was only less dear to him than Atticus. But
+Cicero himself seems to have done so faithfully. We learn from his
+letter that he owned house-property in Rome to a considerable extent,
+having probably thus invested his own money or that of his wife. He
+inherited also the family house at Arpinum. He makes it a matter for
+boasting that he had received in the course of his life by legacies
+nearly L200,000 (twenty million sesterces), in itself a source of great
+income, and one common with Romans of high position.[81] Of the extent
+of his income it is impossible to speak, or even make a guess. But we do
+know that he lived always as a rich man--as one who regards such a
+condition of life as essentially proper to him; and that though he was
+often in debt, as was customary with noble Romans, he could always write
+about his debts in a vein of pleasantry, showing that they were not a
+heavy burden to him; and we know that he could at all times command for
+himself villas, books, statues, ornaments, columns, galleries, charming
+shades, and all the delicious appendages of mingled wealth and
+intelligence. He was as might be some English marquis, who, though up to
+his eyes in mortgages, is quite sure that he will never want any of the
+luxuries befitting a marquis. Though we have no authority to tell us how
+his condition of life became what it was, it is necessary that we should
+understand that condition if we are to get a clear insight into his
+life. Of that condition we have ample evidence. He commenced his career
+as a youth upon whose behalf nothing was spared, and when he settled
+himself in Rome, with the purport of winning for himself the highest
+honors of the Republic, he did so with the means of living like a
+nobleman.
+
+But the point on which it is most necessary to insist is this: that
+while so many--I may almost say all around him in his own order--were
+unscrupulous as to their means of getting money, he kept his hands
+clean. The practice then was much as it is now. A gentleman in our days
+is supposed to have his hands clean; but there has got abroad among us a
+feeling that, only let a man rise high enough, soil will not stick to
+him. To rob is base; but if you rob enough, robbery will become heroism,
+or, at any rate, magnificence. With Caesar his debts have been accounted
+happy audacity; his pillage of Gaul and Spain, and of Rome also, have
+indicated only the success of the great General; his cruelty, which in
+cold-blooded efficiency has equalled if not exceeded the
+blood-thirstiness of any other tyrant, has been called clemency.[82] I
+do not mean to draw a parallel between Caesar and Cicero. No two men
+could have been more different in their natures or in their career. But
+the one has been lauded because he was unscrupulous, and the other has
+incurred reproach because, at every turn and twist in his life, scruples
+dominated him. I do not say that he always did what he thought to be
+right. A man who doubts much can never do that. The thing that was right
+to him in the thinking became wrong to him in the doing. That from which
+he has shrunk as evil when it was within his grasp, takes the color of
+good when it has been beyond his reach. Cicero had not the stuff in him
+to rule the Rome and the Romans of his period; but he was a man whose
+hands were free from all stain, either of blood or money; and for so
+much let him, at any rate, have the credit.
+
+Between the return of Cicero to Rome in 77 B.C. and his election as
+Quaestor in 75, in which period he married Terentia, he made various
+speeches in different causes, of which only one remains to us, or
+rather, a small part of one. This is notable as having been spoken in
+behalf of that Roscius, the great comic actor, whose name has become
+familiar to us on account of his excellence, almost as have those of
+Garrick, of Siddons, and of Talma. It was a pleading as to the value of
+a slave, and the amount of pecuniary responsibility attaching to Roscius
+on account of the slave, who had been murdered when in his charge. As to
+the murder, no question is made. The slave was valuable, and the injury
+done to his master was a matter of importance. He, having been a slave,
+could have no stronger a claim for an injury done to himself than would
+a dog or a horse. The slave, whose name was Panurge--a name which has
+since been made famous as having been borrowed by Rabelais, probably
+from this occurrence, and given to his demon of mischief--showed
+aptitude for acting, and was therefore valuable. Then one Flavius killed
+him; why or how we do not know; and, having killed him, settled with
+Roscius for the injury by giving him a small farm. But Roscius had only
+borrowed or hired the man from one Chaerea--or was in partnership with
+Chaerea as to the man--and on that account paid something out of the
+value of the farm for the loss incurred; but the owner was not
+satisfied, and after a lapse of time made a further claim. Hence arose
+the action, in pleading which Cicero was successful. In the fragment we
+have of the speech there is nothing remarkable except the studied
+clearness of the language; but it reminds us of the opinion which Cicero
+had expressed of this actor in the oration which he made for Publius
+Quintius, who was the brother-in-law of Roscius. "He is such an actor,"
+says Cicero, "that there is none other on the stage worthy to be seen;
+and such a man that among men he is the last that should have become an
+actor."[83] The orator's praise of the actor is not of much importance.
+Had not Roscius been great in his profession, his name would not have
+come down to later ages. Nor is it now matter of great interest that the
+actor should have been highly praised as a man by his advocate; but it
+is something for us to know that the stage was generally held in such
+low repute as to make it seem to be a pity that a good man should have
+taken himself to such a calling.
+
+In the year 76 B.C. Cicero became father of a daughter, whom we shall
+know as Tullia--who, as she grew up, became the one person whom he loved
+best in all the world--and was elected Quaestor. Cicero tells us of
+himself that in the preceding year he had solicited the Quaestorship,
+when Cotta was candidate for the Consulship and Hortensius for the
+Praetorship. There are in the dialogue De Claris Oratoribus--which has
+had the name of Brutus always given to it--some passages in which the
+orator tells us more of himself than in any other of his works. I will
+annex a translation of a small portion because of its intrinsic
+interest; but I will relegate it to an appendix, because it is too long
+either for insertion in the text or for a note.[84]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+_CICERO AS QUAESTOR._
+
+
+Cicero was elected Quaestor in his thirtieth year, B.C. 76. He was then
+nearly thirty-one. His predecessors and rivals at the bar, Cotta and
+Hortensius, were elected Consul and Praetor, respectively, in the same
+year. To become Quaestor at the earliest age allowed by the law (at
+thirty-one, namely) was the ambition of the Roman advocate who purposed
+to make his fortune by serving the State. To act as Quaestor in his
+thirty-second year, AEdile in his thirty-seventh, Praetor in his
+forty-first, and Consul in his forty-fourth year, was to achieve, in the
+earliest succession allowed by law, all the great offices of trust,
+power, and future emolument. The great reward of proconsular rapine did
+not generally come till after the last step, though there were notable
+instances in which a Propraetor with proconsular authority could make a
+large fortune, as we shall learn when we come to deal with Verres, and
+though AEdiles, and even Quaestors, could find pickings. It was therefore
+a great thing for a man to begin as early as the law would permit, and
+to lose as few years as possible in reaching the summit. Cicero lost
+none. As he himself tells us in the passage to which I have referred in
+the last chapter, and which is to be found in the Appendix, he gained
+the good-will of men--that is, of free Romans who had the suffrage, and
+who could therefore vote either for him or against him--by the assiduity
+of his attention to the cases which he undertook, and by a certain
+brilliancy of speech which was new to them.[85] Putting his hand
+strenuously to the plough, allowing himself to be diverted by none of
+those luxuries to which Romans of his day were so wont to give way, he
+earned his purpose by a resolution to do his very best. He was "Novus
+Homo"--a man, that is, belonging to a family of which no member had as
+yet filled high office in the State. Against such there was a strong
+prejudice with the aristocracy, who did not like to see the good things
+of the Republic dispersed among an increased number of hands. The power
+of voting was common to all Roman male citizens; but the power of
+influencing the electors had passed very much into the hands of the
+rich. The admiration which Cicero had determined to elicit would not go
+very far, unless it could be produced in a very high degree. A Verres
+could get himself made Praetor; a Lepidus some years since could receive
+the Consulship; or now an Antony, or almost a Catiline. The candidate
+would borrow money on the security of his own audacity, and would thus
+succeed--perhaps with some minor gifts of eloquence, if he could achieve
+them. With all this, the borrowing and the spending of money, that is,
+with direct bribery, Cicero would have nothing to do; but of the art of
+canvassing--that art by which he could at the moment make himself
+beloved by the citizens who had a vote to give--he was a profound
+master.
+
+There is a short treatise, De Petitione Consulatus, on canvassing for
+the Consulship, of which mention may be made here, because all the
+tricks of the trade were as essential to him, when looking to be
+Quaestor, as when he afterward desired to be Consul, and because the
+political doings of his life will hurry us on too quickly in the days of
+his Consulship to admit of our referring to these lessons. This little
+piece, of which we have only a fragment, is supposed to have been
+addressed to Cicero by his brother Quintus, giving fraternal advice as
+to the then coming great occasion. The critics say that it was retouched
+by the orator himself. The reader who has studied Cicero's style will
+think that the retouching went to a great extent, or that the two
+brothers were very like each other in their power of expression.
+
+The first piece of advice was no doubt always in Cicero's mind, not only
+when he looked for office, but whenever he addressed a meeting of his
+fellow-citizens. "Bethink yourself what is this Republic; what it is you
+seek to be in it, and who you are that seek it. As you go down daily to
+the Forum, turn the answer to this in your mind: 'Novus sum; consulatum
+peto; Roma est'--'I am a man of an untried family. It is the Consulship
+that I seek. It is Rome in which I seek it.'" Though the condition of
+Rome was bad, still to him the Republic was the greatest thing in the
+world, and to be Consul in that Republic the highest honor which the
+world could give.
+
+There is nobility in that, but there is very much that is ignoble in the
+means of canvassing which are advocated. I cannot say that they are as
+yet too ignoble for our modern use here in England, but they are too
+ignoble to be acknowledged by our candidates themselves, or by their
+brothers on their behalf. Cicero, not having progressed far enough in
+modern civilization to have studied the beauty of truth, is held to be
+false and hypocritical. We who know so much more than he did, and have
+the doctrine of truth at our fingers' ends, are wise enough to declare
+nothing of our own shortcomings, but to attribute such malpractices only
+to others. "It is a good thing to be thought worthy of the rank we seek
+by those who are in possession of it." Make yourself out to be an
+aristocrat, he means. "Canvass them, and cotton to them. Make them
+believe that in matters of politics you have always been with the
+aristocracy, never with the mob;" that if "you have at all spoken a word
+in public to tickle the people, you have done so for the sake of gaining
+Pompey." As to this, it is necessary to understand Pompey's peculiar
+popularity at the moment, both with the Liberals and with the
+Conservatives. "Above all, see that you have with you the 'jeunesse
+doree.' They carry so much! There are many with you already. Take care
+that they shall know how much you think of them."
+
+He is especially desired to make known to the public the iniquities of
+Catiline, his opponent, as to whom Quintus says that, though he has
+lately been acquitted in regard to his speculations in Africa, he has
+had to bribe the judges so highly that he is now as poor as they were
+before they got their plunder. At every word we read we are tempted to
+agree with Mommsen that on the Roman oligarchy of the period no judgment
+can be passed save one, "of inexorable condemnation."[86]
+
+"Remember," says Quintus, "that your candidature is very strong in that
+kind of friendship which has been created by your pleadings. Take care
+that each of those friends shall know what special business is allotted
+to him on the occasion; and as you have not troubled any of them yet,
+make them understand that you have reserved for the present moment the
+payment of their debts." This is all very well; but the next direction
+mingles so much of business with its truth, that no one but Machiavelli
+or Quintus Cicero could have expressed it in words. "Men," says Quintus,
+"are induced to struggle for us in these canvassings by three
+motives--by memory of kindness done, by the hope of kindness to come,
+and by community of political conviction. You must see how you are to
+catch each of these. Small favors will induce a man to canvass for you;
+and they who owe their safety to your pleadings, for there are many
+such, are aware that if they do not stand by you now they will be
+regarded by all the world as sorry fellows. Nevertheless, they should be
+made to feel that, as they are indebted to you, you will be glad to have
+an opportunity of becoming indebted to them. But as to those on whom you
+have a hold only by hope--a class of men very much more numerous, and
+likely to be very much more active--they are the men whom you should
+make to understand that your assistance will be always at their
+command."
+
+How severe, how difficult was the work of canvassing in Rome, we learn
+from these lessons. It was the very essence of a great Roman's life that
+he should live in public; and to such an extent was this carried that we
+wonder how such a man as Cicero found time for the real work of his
+life. The Roman patron was expected to have a levee every morning early
+in his own house, and was wont, when he went down into the Forum, to be
+attended by a crowd of parasites. This had become so much a matter of
+course that a public man would have felt himself deserted had he been
+left alone either at home or abroad. Rome was full of idlers--of men who
+got their bread by the favors of the great, who lounged through their
+lives--political quidnuncs, who made canvassing a trade--men without a
+conviction, but who believed in the ascendency of this or the other
+leader, and were ready to fawn or to fight in the streets, as there
+might be need. These were the Quirites of the day--men who were in truth
+fattened on the leavings of the plunder which was extracted from the
+allies; for it was the case now that a Roman was content to live on the
+industry of those whom his father had conquered. They would still fight
+in the legions; but the work of Rome was done by slaves, and the wealth
+of Rome was robbed from the Provinces. Hence it came about that there
+was a numerous class, to whom the name "assectatores" was given, who of
+course became specially prominent at elections. Quintus divides all such
+followers into three kinds, and gives instructions as to the special
+treatment to be applied to each. "There are those who come to pay their
+respects to you at your own house"--"Salutatores" they were called;
+"then those who go down with you into the Forum"--"Deductores;" "and
+after these the third, the class of constant followers"--"Assectatores,"
+as they were specially named. "As to the first, who are the least in
+consequence, and who, according to our present ways of living, come in
+great numbers, you should take care to let them know that their doing
+even so much as this is much esteemed by you. Let them perceive that you
+note it when they come, and say as much to their friends, who will
+repeat your words. Tell themselves often if it be possible. In this way
+men, when there are many candidates, will observe that there is one who
+has his eyes open to these courtesies, and they will give themselves
+heart and soul to him, neglecting all others. And mind you, when you
+find that a man does but pretend, do not let him perceive that you have
+perceived it. Should any one wish to excuse himself, thinking that he is
+suspected of indifference, swear that you have never doubted him, nor
+had occasion to doubt.
+
+"As to the work of the 'Deductores,' who go out with you--as it is much
+more severe than that of those who merely come to pay their compliments,
+let them understand that you feel it to be so, and, as far as possible,
+be ready to go into town with them at fixed hours." Quintus here means
+that the "Deductores" are not to be kept waiting for the patron longer
+than can be helped. "The attendance of a daily crowd in taking you down
+to the Forum gives a great show of character and dignity.
+
+"Then come the band of followers which accompanies you diligently
+wherever you go. As to those who do this without special obligation,
+take care that they should know how much you think of them. From those
+who owe it to you as a duty, exact it rigorously. See that they who can
+come themselves do come themselves, and that they who cannot, send
+others in their places." What an idea does this give as to the labor of
+a candidate in Rome! I can imagine it to be worse even than the
+canvassing of an English borough, which to a man of spirit and honor is
+the most degrading of all existing employments not held to be absolutely
+disgraceful.
+
+Quintus then goes on from the special management of friends to the
+general work of canvassing. "It requires the remembering of men's
+names"--"nomenclationem," a happy word we do not possess--"flattery,
+diligence, sweetness of temper, good report, and a high standing in the
+Republic. Let it be seen that you have been at the trouble to remember
+people, and practise yourself to it so that the power may increase with
+you. There is nothing so alluring to the citizen as that. If there be a
+softness which you have not by nature, so affect it that it shall seem
+to be your own naturally. You have indeed a way with you which is not
+unbecoming to a good-natured man; but you must caress men--which is in
+truth vile and sordid at other times, but is absolutely necessary at
+elections. It is no doubt a mean thing to flatter some low fellow, but
+when it is necessary to make a friend it can be pardoned. A candidate
+must do it, whose face and look and tongue should be made to suit those
+he has to meet. What perseverance means I need not tell you. The word
+itself explains itself. As a matter of course, you shall not leave the
+city; but it is not enough for you to stick to your work in Rome and in
+the Forum. You must seek out the voters and canvass them separately; and
+take care that no one shall ask from another what it is that you want
+from him. Let it have been solicited by yourself, and often solicited."
+Quintus seems to have understood the business well, and the elder
+brother no doubt profited by the younger brother's care.
+
+It was so they did it at Rome. That men should have gone through all
+this in search of plunder and wealth does not strike us as being
+marvellous, or even out of place. A vile object justifies vile means.
+But there were some at Rome who had it in their hearts really to serve
+their country, and with whom it was at the same time a matter of
+conscience that, in serving their country, they would not dishonestly or
+dishonorably enrich themselves. There was still a grain of salt left.
+But even this could not make itself available for useful purpose without
+having recourse to tricks such as these!
+
+[Sidenote: B.C. 75, aetat. 32.]
+
+In his proper year Cicero became Quaestor, and had assigned to him by lot
+the duty of looking after the Western Division of Sicily. For Sicily,
+though but one province as regarded general condition, being under one
+governor with proconsular authority, retained separate modes of
+government, or, rather, varied forms of subjection to Rome, especially
+in matters of taxation, according as it had or had not been conquered
+from the Carthaginians.[87] Cicero was quartered at Lilybaeum, on the
+west, whereas the other Quaestor was placed at Syracuse, in the east.
+There were at that time twenty Quaestors elected annually, some of whom
+remained in Rome; but most of the number were stationed about the
+Empire, there being always one as assistant to each Proconsul. When a
+Consul took the field with an army, he always had a Quaestor with him.
+This had become the case so generally that the Quaestor became, as it
+were, something between a private secretary and a senior lieutenant to a
+governor. The arrangement came to have a certain sanctity attached to
+it, as though there was something in the connection warmer and closer
+than that of mere official life; so that a Quaestor has been called a
+Proconsul's son for the time, and was supposed to feel that reverence
+and attachment that a son entertains for his father.
+
+But to Cicero, and to young Quaestors in general, the great attraction of
+the office consisted in the fact that the aspirant having once become a
+Quaestor was a Senator for the rest of his life, unless he should be
+degraded by misconduct. Gradually it had come to pass that the Senate
+was replenished by the votes of the people, not directly, but by the
+admission into the Senate of the popularly elected magistrates. There
+were in the time of Cicero between 500 and 600 members of this body. The
+numbers down to the time of Sulla had been increased or made up by
+direct selection by the old Kings, or by the Censors, or by some
+Dictator, such as was Sulla; and the same thing was done afterward by
+Julius Caesar. The years between Sulla's Dictatorship and that of Caesar
+were but thirty--from 79 to 49 B.C. These, however, were the years in
+which Cicero dreamed that the Republic could be re-established by means
+of an honest Senate, which Senate was then to be kept alive by the
+constant infusion of new blood, accruing to it from the entrance of
+magistrates who had been chosen by the people. Tacitus tells us that it
+was with this object that Sulla had increased the number of
+Quaestors.[88] Cicero's hopes--his futile hopes of what an honest Senate
+might be made to do--still ran high, although at the very time in which
+he was elected Quaestor he was aware that the judges, then elected from
+the Senate, were so corrupt that their judgment could not be trusted. Of
+this popular mode of filling the Senate he speaks afterward in his
+treatise De Legibus. "From those who have acted as magistrates the
+Senate is composed--a measure altogether in the popular interest, as no
+one can now reach the highest rank"--namely, the Senate--"except by the
+votes of the people, all power of selecting having been taken away from
+the Censors."[89] In his pleadings for P. Sextus he makes the same boast
+as to old times, not with absolute accuracy, as far as we can understand
+the old constitution, but with the same passionate ardor as to the body.
+"Romans, when they could no longer endure the rule of kings, created
+annual magistrates, but after such fashion that the Council of the
+Senate was set over the Republic for its guidance. Senators were chosen
+for that work by the entire people, and the entrance to that order was
+opened to the virtue and to the industry of the citizens at large."[90]
+When defending Cluentius, he expatiates on the glorious privileges of
+the Roman Senate. "Its high place, its authority, its splendor at home,
+its name and fame abroad, the purple robe, the ivory chair, the appanage
+of office, the fasces, the army with its command, the government of the
+provinces!"[91] On that splendor "apud exteras gentes," he expatiates in
+one of his attacks upon Verres.[92] From all this will be seen Cicero's
+idea of the chamber into which he had made his way as soon as he had
+been chosen Quaestor.
+
+In this matter, which was the pivot on which his whole life turned--the
+character, namely, of the Roman Senate--it cannot but be observed that
+he was wont to blow both hot and cold. It was his nature to do so, not
+from any aptitude for deceit, but because he was sanguine and
+vacillating--because he now aspired and now despaired. He blew hot and
+cold in regard to the Senate, because at times he would feel it to be
+what it was--composed, for the most part, of men who were time-serving
+and corrupt, willing to sell themselves for a price to any buyer; and
+then, again, at times he would think of the Senate as endowed with all
+those privileges which he names, and would dream that under his
+influence it would become what it should be--such a Senate as he
+believed it to have been in its old palmy days. His praise of the
+Senate, his description of what it should be and might be, I have given.
+To the other side of the picture we shall come soon, when I shall have
+to show how, at the trial of Verres, he declared before the judges
+themselves how terrible had been the corruption of the judgment-seat in
+Rome since, by Sulla's enactment, it had been occupied only by the
+Senators. One passage I will give now, in order that the reader may see
+by the juxtaposition of the words that he could denounce the Senate as
+loudly as he would vaunt its privileges. In the column on the left hand
+in the note I quote the words with which, in the first pleading against
+Verres, he declared "that every base and iniquitous thing done on the
+judgment-seat during the ten years since the power of judging had been
+transferred to the Senate should be not only denounced by him, but also
+proved;" and in that on the right I will repeat the noble phrases which
+he afterward used in the speech for Cluentius when he chose to speak
+well of the order.[93]
+
+It was on the Senate that they who wished well for Rome must depend--on
+the Senate, chosen, refreshed, and replenished from among the people; on
+a body which should be at the same time august and popular--as far
+removed on the one side from the tyranny of individuals as on the other
+from the violence of the mob; but on a Senate freed from its corruption
+and dirt, on a body of noble Romans, fitted by their individual
+character and high rank to rule and to control their fellow-citizens.
+This was Cicero's idea, and this the state of things which he endeavored
+to achieve. No doubt he dreamed that his own eloquence and his own
+example might do more in producing this than is given to men to achieve
+by such means. No doubt there was conceit in this--conceit and perhaps,
+vanity. It has to be admitted that Cicero always exaggerated his own
+powers. But the ambition was great, the purpose noble, and the course of
+his whole life was such as to bring no disgrace on his aspirations. He
+did not thunder against the judges for taking bribes, and then plunder a
+province himself. He did not speak grandly of the duty of a patron to
+his clients, and then open his hands to illicit payments. He did not
+call upon the Senate for high duty, and then devote himself to luxury
+and pleasure. He had a _beau ideal_ of the manner in which a Roman
+Senator should live and work, and he endeavored to work and live up to
+that ideal. There was no period after his Consulship in which he was not
+aware of his own failure. Nevertheless, with constant labor, but with
+intermittent struggles, he went on, till, at the end, in the last fiery
+year of his existence, he taught himself again to think that even yet
+there was a chance. How he struggled, and in struggling perished, we
+shall see by-and-by.
+
+What Cicero did as Quaestor in Sicily we have no means of knowing. His
+correspondence does not go back so far. That he was very active, and
+active for good, we have two testimonies, one of which is serious,
+convincing, and most important as an episode in his life. The other
+consists simply of a good story, told by himself of himself; not
+intended at all for his own glorification, but still carrying with it a
+certain weight. As to the first: Cicero was Quaestor in Lilybaeum in the
+thirty-second year of his life. In the thirty-seventh year he was
+elected AEdile, and was then called upon by the Sicilians to attack
+Verres on their behalf. Verres was said to have carried off from Sicily
+plunder to the amount of nearly L400,000,[94] after a misrule of three
+years' duration. All Sicily was ruined. Beyond its pecuniary losses, its
+sufferings had been excruciating; but not till the end had come of a
+Governor's proconsular authority could the almost hopeless chance of a
+criminal accusation against the tyrant be attempted. The tyrant would
+certainly have many friends in Rome. The injured provincials would
+probably have none of great mark. A man because he had been Quaestor was
+not, necessarily, one having influence, unless he belonged to some great
+family. This was not the case with Cicero. But he had made for himself
+such a character during his year of office that the Sicilians declared
+that, if they could trust themselves to any man at Rome, it would be to
+their former Quaestor. It had been a part of his duty to see that the
+proper supply of corn was collected in the island and sent to Rome. A
+great portion of the bread eaten in Rome was grown in Sicily, and much
+of it was supplied in the shape of a tax. It was the hateful practice of
+Rome to extract the means of living from her colonies, so as to spare
+her own laborers. To this, hard as it was, the Sicilians were well used.
+They knew the amount required of them by law, and were glad enough when
+they could be quit in payment of the dues which the law required; but
+they were seldom blessed by such moderation on the part of their rulers.
+To what extent this special tax could be stretched we shall see when we
+come to the details of the trial of Verres. It is no doubt only from
+Cicero's own words that we learn that, though he sent to Rome plenteous
+supplies, he was just to the dealer, liberal to the pawns, and
+forbearing to the allies generally; and that when he took his departure
+they paid him honors hitherto unheard of.[95] But I think we may take it
+for granted that this statement is true; firstly, because it has never
+been contradicted; and then from the fact that the Sicilians all came to
+him in the day of their distress.
+
+As to the little story to which I have alluded, it has been told so
+often since Cicero told it himself, that I am almost ashamed to repeat
+it. It is, however, too emblematic of the man, gives us too close an
+insight both into his determination to do his duty and to his
+pride--conceit, if you will--at having done it, to be omitted. In his
+speech for Plancius[96] he tells us that by chance, coming direct from
+Sicily after his Quaestorship, he found himself at Puteoli just at the
+season when the fashion from Rome betook itself to that delightful
+resort. He was full of what he had done--how he had supplied Rome with
+corn, but had done so without injury to the Sicilians, how honestly he
+had dealt with the merchants, and had in truth won golden opinions on
+all sides--so much so that he thought that when he reached the city the
+citizens in a mob would be ready to receive him. Then at Puteoli he met
+two acquaintances. "Ah," says one to him, "when did you leave Rome? What
+news have you brought?" Cicero, drawing his head up, as we can see him,
+replied that he had just returned from his province. "Of course, just
+back from Africa," said the other. "Not so," said Cicero, bridling in
+anger--"stomachans fastidiose," as he describes it himself--"but from
+Sicily." Then the other lounger, a fellow who pretended to know
+everything, put in his word. "Do you not know that our Cicero has been
+Quaestor at Syracuse?" The reader will remember that he had been Quaestor
+in the other division of the island, at Lilybaeum. "There was no use in
+thinking any more about it," says Cicero. "I gave up being angry and
+determined to be like any one else, just one at the waters." Yes, he had
+been very conceited, and well understood his own fault of character in
+that respect; but he would not have shown his conceit in that matter had
+he not resolved to do his duty in a manner uncommon then among Quaestors,
+and been conscious that he had done it.
+
+Perhaps there is no more certain way of judging a man than from his own
+words, if his real words be in our possession. In doing so, we are bound
+to remember how strong will be the bias of every man's mind in his own
+favor, and for that reason a judicious reader will discount a man's
+praise of himself. But the reader, to get at the truth, if he be indeed
+judicious, will discount them after a fashion conformable with the
+nature of the man whose character he is investigating. A reader will not
+be judicious who imagines that what a man says of his own praises must
+be false, or that all which can be drawn from his own words in his own
+dispraise must be true. If a man praise himself for honor, probity,
+industry, and patriotism, he will at any rate show that these virtues
+are dear to him, unless the course of his life has proved him to be
+altogether a hypocrite in such utterances. It has not been presumed that
+Cicero was a hypocrite in these utterances. He was honest and
+industrious; he did appreciate honor and love his country. So much is
+acknowledged; and yet it is supposed that what good he has told us of
+himself is false. If a man doubt of himself constantly; if in his most
+private intercourse and closest familiar utterances he admit
+occasionally his own human weakness; if he find himself to have failed
+at certain moments, and says so, the very feelings that have produced
+such confessions are proof that the highest points which have not been
+attained have been seen and valued. A man will not sorrowfully regret
+that he has won only a second place, or a third, unless he be alive to
+the glory of the first. But Cicero's acknowledgments have all been taken
+as proof against himself. All manner of evil is argued against him from
+his own words, when an ill meaning can be attached to them; but when he
+speaks of his great aspirations, he is ridiculed for bombast and vanity.
+On the strength of some perhaps unconsidered expression, in a letter to
+Atticus, he is condemned for treachery, whereas the sentences in which
+he has thoughtfully declared the purposes of his very soul are counted
+as clap-traps.
+
+No one has been so frequently condemned out of his mouth as Cicero, and
+naturally. In these modern days we have contemporary records as to
+prominent persons. Of the characters of those who lived in long-past
+ages we generally fail to have any clear idea, because we lack those
+close chronicles which are necessary for the purpose. What insight have
+we into the personality of Alexander the Great, or what insight had
+Plutarch, who wrote about him? As to Samuel Johnson, we seem to know
+every turn of his mind, having had a Boswell. Alexander had no Boswell.
+But here is a man belonging to those past ages of which I speak who was
+his own Boswell, and after such a fashion that, since letters were
+invented, no records have ever been written in language more clear or
+more attractive. It is natural that we should judge out of his own mouth
+one who left so many more words behind him than did any one else,
+particularly one who left words so pleasant to read. And all that he
+wrote was after some fashion about himself. His letters, like all
+letters, are personal to himself. His speeches are words coming out of
+his own mouth about affairs in which he was personally engaged and
+interested. His rhetoric consists of lessons given by himself about his
+own art, founded on his own experience, and on his own observation of
+others. His so-called philosophy gives us the workings of his own mind.
+No one has ever told the world so much about another person as Cicero
+has told the world about Cicero. Boswell pales before him as a
+chronicler of minutiae. It may be a matter of small interest now to the
+bulk of readers to be intimately acquainted with a Roman who was never
+one of the world's conquerors. It may be well for those who desire to
+know simply the facts of the world's history, to dismiss as unnecessary
+the aspirations of one who lived so long ago. But if it be worth while
+to discuss the man's character, it must be worth while to learn the
+truth about it.
+
+"Oh that mine adversary had written a book!" Who does not understand the
+truth of these words! It is always out of a man's mouth that you may
+most surely condemn him. Cicero wrote many books, and all about himself.
+He has been honored very highly. Middleton, in the preface to his own
+biography, which, with all its charms, has become a bye-word for eulogy,
+quotes the opinion of Erasmus, who tells us that he loves the writings
+of the man "not only for the divine felicity of his style, but for the
+sanctity of his heart and morals." This was the effect left on the mind
+of an accurate thinker and most just man. But then also has Cicero been
+spoken of with the bitterest scorn. From Dio Cassius, who wrote two
+hundred and twenty years after Christ, down to Mr. Froude, whose Caesar
+has just been published, he has had such hard things said of him by men
+who have judged him out of his own mouth, that the reader does not know
+how to reconcile what he now reads with the opinion of men of letters
+who lived and wrote in the century next after his death--with the
+testimony of such a man as Erasmus, and with the hearty praises of his
+biographer, Middleton. The sanctity of his heart and morals! It was thus
+that Erasmus was struck in reading his works. It is a feeling of that
+kind, I profess, that has induced me to take this work in hand--a
+feeling produced altogether by the study of his own words. It has seemed
+to be that he has loved men so well, has been so anxious for the true,
+has been so capable of honesty when dishonesty was common among all
+around him, has been so jealous in the cause of good government, has
+been so hopeful when there has been but little ground for hope, as to
+have deserved a reputation for sanctity of heart and morals.
+
+Of the speeches made by Cicero as advocate after his Quaestorship, and
+before those made in the accusation of Verres, we have the fragment only
+of the second of two spoken in defence of Marcus Tullius Decula, whom we
+may suppose to have been distantly connected with his family. He does
+not avow any relationship. "What," he says, in opening his argument,
+"does it become me, a Tullius, to do for this other Tullius, a man not
+only my friend, but my namesake?" It was a matter of no great
+importance, as it was addressed to judges not so called, but to
+"recuperatores," judges chosen by the Praetor, and who acted in lighter
+cases.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+_VERRES._
+
+
+There are six episodes, or, as I may say, divisions in the life of
+Cicero to which special interest attaches itself. The first is the
+accusation against Verres, in which he drove the miscreant howling out
+of the city. The second is his Consulship, in which he drove Catiline
+out of the city, and caused certain other conspirators who were joined
+with the arch rebel to be killed, either legally or illegally. The third
+was his exile, in which he himself was driven out of Rome. The fourth
+was a driving out, too, though of a more honorable kind, when he was
+compelled, much against his will, to undertake the government of a
+province. The fifth was Caesar's passing of the Rubicon, the battle of
+Pharsalia, and his subsequent adherence to Caesar. The last was his
+internecine combat with Antony, which produced the Philippics, and that
+memorable series of letters in which he strove to stir into flames the
+expiring embers of the Republic. The literary work with which we are
+acquainted is spread, but spread very unequally, over his whole life. I
+have already told the story of Sextus Roscius Amerinus, having taken it
+from his own words. From that time onward he wrote continually; but the
+fervid stream of his eloquence came forth from him with unrivalled
+rapidity in the twenty last miserable months of his life.
+
+We have now come to the first of those episodes, and I have to tell the
+way in which Cicero struggled with Verres, and how he conquered him. In
+74 B.C. Verres was Praetor in Rome. At that period of the Republic there
+were eight Praetors elected annually, two of whom remained in the city,
+whereas the others were employed abroad, generally with the armies of
+the Empire. In the next year, 73 B.C., Verres went in due course to
+Sicily with proconsular or propraetorial authority, having the government
+assigned to him for twelve months. This was usual and constitutional,
+but it was not unusual, even if unconstitutional, that this period
+should be prolonged. In the case of Verres it was prolonged, so that he
+should hold the office for three years. He had gone through the other
+offices of the State, having been Quaestor in Asia and AEdile afterward in
+Rome, to the great misfortune of all who were subjected to his handling,
+as we shall learn by-and-by. The facts are mentioned here to show that
+the great offices of the Republic were open to such a man as Verres.
+They were in fact more open to such a candidate than they would be to
+one less iniquitous--to an honest man or a scrupulous one, or to one
+partially honest, or not altogether unscrupulous. If you send a dog into
+a wood to get truffles, you will endeavor to find one that will tear up
+as many truffles as possible. A proconsular robber did not rob only for
+himself; he robbed more or less for all Rome. Verres boasted that with
+his three years of rule he could bring enough home to bribe all the
+judges, secure all the best advocates, and live in splendid opulence for
+the rest of his life. What a dog he was to send into a wood for
+truffles!
+
+To such a condition as this had Rome fallen when the deputies from
+Sicily came to complain of their late governor, and to obtain the
+services of Cicero in seeking for whatever reparation might be possible.
+Verres had carried on his plunder during the years 73, 72, 71 B.C.
+During this time Cicero had been engaged sedulously as an advocate in
+Rome. We know the names of some of the cases in which he was
+engaged--those, for instance, for Publius Oppius, who, having been
+Quaestor in Bithynia, was accused by his Proconsul of having endeavored
+to rob the soldiers of their dues. We are told that the poor province
+suffered greatly under these two officers, who were always quarrelling
+as to a division of their plunder. In this case the senior officer
+accused the younger, and the younger, by Cicero's aid, was acquitted.
+Quintilian more than once refers to the speech made for Oppius. Cicero
+also defended Varenus, who was charged with having murdered his brother,
+and one Caius Mustius, of whom we only know that he was a farmer of
+taxes. He was advocate also for Sthenius, a Sicilian, who was accused
+before the Tribunes by Verres. We shall hear of Sthenius again among the
+victims in Sicily. The special charge in this case was that, having been
+condemned by Verres as Praetor in Sicily, he had run away to Rome, which
+was illegal. He was, however, acquitted. Of these speeches we have only
+some short fragments, which have been quoted by authors whose works have
+come down to us, such as Quintilian; by which we know, at any rate, that
+Cicero's writings had been so far carefully preserved, and that they
+were commonly read in those days. I will translate here the concluding
+words of a short paper written by M. du Rozoir in reference to Cicero's
+life at this period: "The assiduity of our orator at the bar had
+obtained for him a high degree of favor among the people, because they
+had seen how strictly he had observed that Cincian law which forbade
+advocates to take either money or presents for then pleadings--which
+law, however, the advocates of the day generally did not scruple to
+neglect."[97] It is a good thing to be honest when honesty is in vogue;
+but to be honest when honesty is out of fashion is magnificent.
+
+In the affair with Verres, there are two matters to interest the
+reader--indeed, to instruct the reader--if the story were sufficiently
+well told. The iniquity of Verres is the first--which is of so
+extravagant a nature as to become farcical by the absurdity of the
+extent to which he was not afraid to go in the furtherance of his
+avarice and lust. As the victims suffered two thousand years ago, we can
+allow ourselves to be amused by the inexhaustible fertility of the man's
+resources and the singular iniquity of his schemes. Then we are brought
+face to face with the barefaced corruption of the Roman judges--a
+corruption which, however, became a regular trade, if not ennobled,
+made, at any rate, aristocratic by the birth, wealth high names, and
+senatorial rank of the robbers. Sulla, for certain State purposes--which
+consisted in the maintenance of the oligarchy--had transferred the
+privileges of sitting on the judgment-seat from the Equites, or Knights,
+to the Senators. From among the latter a considerable number--thirty,
+perhaps, or forty, or even fifty--were appointed to sit with the Praetor
+to hear criminal cases of importance, and by their votes, which were
+recorded on tablets, the accused person was acquitted or condemned. To
+be acquitted by the most profuse corruption entailed no disgrace on him
+who was tried, and often but little on the judges who tried him. In
+Cicero's time the practice, with all its chances, had come to be well
+understood. The Provincial Governors, with their Quaestors and
+lieutenants, were chosen from the high aristocracy, which also supplied
+the judges. The judges themselves had been employed, or hoped to be
+employed, in similar lucrative service. The leading advocates belonged
+to the same class. If the proconsular thief, when he had made his bag,
+would divide the spoil with some semblance of equity among his brethren,
+nothing could be more convenient. The provinces were so large, and the
+Greek spirit of commercial enterprise which prevailed in them so lively,
+that there was room for plunder ample, at any rate, for a generation or
+two. The Republic boasted that, in its love of pure justice, it had
+provided by certain laws for the protection of its allied subjects
+against any possible faults of administration on the part of its own
+officers. If any injury were done to a province, or a city, or even to
+an individual, the province, or city, or individual could bring its
+grievance to the ivory chair of the Praetor in Rome and demand redress;
+and there had been cases not a few in which a delinquent officer had
+been condemned to banishment. Much, indeed, was necessary before the
+scheme as it was found to exist by Verres could work itself into
+perfection. Verres felt that in his time everything had been done for
+security as well as splendor. He would have all the great officers of
+State on his side. The Sicilians, if he could manage the case as he
+thought it might be managed, would not have a leg to stand upon. There
+was many a trick within his power before they could succeed in making
+good even their standing before the Praetor. It was in this condition of
+things that Cicero bethought himself that he might at one blow break
+through the corruption of the judgment-seat, and this he determined to
+do by subjecting the judges to the light of public opinion. If Verres
+could be tried under a bushel, as it were, in the dark, as many others
+had been tried, so that little or nothing should be said about the trial
+in the city at large, then there would be no danger for the judges. It
+could only be by shaming them, by making them understand that Rome would
+become too hot to hold them, that they could be brought to give a
+verdict against the accused. This it was that Cicero determined to
+effect, and did effect. And we see throughout the whole pleadings that
+he was concerned in the matter not only for the Sicilians, or against
+Verres. Could something be done for the sake of Rome, for the sake of
+the Republic, to redeem the courts of justice from the obloquy which was
+attached to them? Might it be possible for a man so to address himself
+not only to the judgment-seat, but to all Rome, as to do away with this
+iniquity once and forever? Could he so fill the minds of the citizens
+generally with horror at such proceedings as to make them earnest in
+demanding reform? Hortensius, the great advocate of the day, was not
+only engaged on behalf of Verres, but he was already chosen as Consul
+for the next year. Metellus, who was elected Praetor for the next year,
+was hot in defence of Verres. Indeed, there were three Metelluses among
+the friends of the accused, who had also on his side the Scipio of the
+day. The aristocracy of Rome was altogether on the side of Verres, as
+was natural. But if Cicero might succeed at all in this which he
+meditated, the very greatness of his opponents would help him. When it
+was known that he was to be pitted against Hortensius as an advocate,
+and that he intended to defy Hortensius as the coming Consul, then
+surely Rome would be awake to the occasion; and if Rome could be made to
+awake herself, then would this beautiful scheme of wealth from
+provincial plunder be brought to an end.
+
+I will first speak of the work of the judges, and of the attempts made
+to hinder Cicero in the business he had undertaken. Then I will endeavor
+to tell something of the story of Verres and his doings. The subject
+divides itself naturally in this way. There are extant seven so-called
+orations about Verres, of which the two first apply to the manner in
+which the case should be brought before the courts. These two were
+really spoken, and were so effective that Verres--or probably
+Hortensius, on his behalf--was frightened into silence. Verres pleaded
+guilty, as we should say, which, in accordance with the usages of the
+court, he was enabled to do by retiring and going into voluntary
+banishment. This he did, sooner than stand his ground and listen to the
+narration of his iniquities as it would be given by Cicero in the full
+speech--the "perpetua oratio"--which would follow the examination of the
+witnesses. What the orator said before the examination of the witnesses
+was very short. He had to husband his time, as it was a part of the
+grand scheme of Hortensius to get adjournment after adjournment because
+of certain sacred rites and games, during the celebration of which the
+courts could not sit. All this was arranged for in the scheme; but
+Cicero, in order that he might baffle the schemers, got through his
+preliminary work as quickly as possible, saying all that he had to say
+about the manner of the trial, about the judges, about the scheme, but
+dilating very little on the iniquities of the criminal. But having thus
+succeeded, having gained his cause in a great measure by the unexpected
+quickness of his operations, then he told his story. Then was made that
+"perpetua oratio" by which we have learned the extent to which a Roman
+governor could go on desolating a people who were intrusted to his
+protection. This full narration is divided into five parts, each devoted
+to a separate class of iniquity. These were never spoken, though they
+appear in the form of speeches. They would have been spoken, if
+required, in answer to the defence made by Hortensius on behalf of
+Verres after the hearing of the evidence. But the defence broke down
+altogether, in the fashion thus described by Cicero himself. "In that
+one hour in which I spoke"--this was the speech which we designate as
+the Actio Prima contra Verrem, the first pleading made against Verres,
+to which we shall come just now--"I took away all hope of bribing the
+judges from the accused--from this brazen-faced, rich, dissolute, and
+abandoned man. On the first day of the trial, on the mere calling of the
+names of the witnesses, the people of Rome were able to perceive that if
+this criminal were absolved, then there could be no chance for the
+Republic. On the second day his friends and advocates had not only lost
+all hope of gaining their cause, but all relish for going on with it.
+The third day so paralyzed the man himself that he had to bethink
+himself not what sort of reply he could make, but how he could escape
+the necessity of replying by pretending to be ill."[98] It was in this
+way that the trial was brought to an end.
+
+But we must go back to the beginning. When an accusation was to be made
+against some great Roman of the day on account of illegal public
+misdoings, as was to be made now against Verres, the conduct of the
+case, which would require probably great labor and expense, and would
+give scope for the display of oratorical excellence, was regarded as a
+task in which a young aspirant to public favor might obtain honor and by
+which he might make himself known to the people. It had, therefore, come
+to pass that there might be two or more accusers anxious to undertake
+the work, and to show themselves off as solicitous on behalf of injured
+innocence, or desirous of laboring in the service of the Republic. When
+this was the case, a court of judges was called upon to decide whether
+this man or that other was most fit to perform the work in hand. Such a
+trial was called "Divinatio," because the judges had to get their lights
+in the matter as best they could without the assistance of witnesses--by
+some process of divination--with the aid of the gods, as it might be.
+Cicero's first speech in the matter of Verres is called In Quintum
+Caecilium Divinatio, because one Caecilius came forward to take the case
+away from him. Here was a part of the scheme laid by Hortensius. To deal
+with Cicero in such a matter would no doubt be awkward. His purpose, his
+diligence, his skill, his eloquence, his honesty were known. There must
+be a trial. So much was acknowledged; but if the conduct of it could be
+relegated to a man who was dishonest, or who had no skill, no fitness,
+no special desire for success, then the little scheme could be carried
+through in that way. So Caecilius was put forward as Cicero's competitor,
+and our first speech is that made by Cicero to prove his own superiority
+to that of his rival.
+
+Whether Caecilius was or was not hired to break down in his assumed duty
+as accuser, we do not know. The biographers have agreed to say that such
+was the case,[99] grounding their assertion, no doubt, on extreme
+probability. But I doubt whether there is any evidence as to this.
+Cicero himself brings this accusation, but not in that direct manner
+which he would have used had he been able to prove it. The Sicilians, at
+any rate, said that it was so. As to the incompetency of the man, there
+was probably no doubt, and it might be quite as serviceable to have an
+incompetent as a dishonest accuser. Caecilius himself had declared that
+no one could be so fit as himself for the work. He knew Sicily well,
+having been born there. He had been Quaestor there with Verres, and had
+been able to watch the governor's doings. No doubt there was--or had
+been in more pious days--a feeling that a Quaestor should never turn
+against the Proconsul under whom he had served, and to whom he had held
+the position almost of a son.[100] But there was less of that feeling
+now than heretofore. Verres had quarrelled with his Quaestor. Oppius was
+called on to defend himself against the Proconsul with whom he had
+served. No one could know the doings of the governor of a province as
+well as his own Quaestor; and, therefore, so said Caecilius, he would be
+the preferable accuser. As to his hatred of the man, there could be no
+doubt as to that. Everybody knew that they had quarrelled. The purpose,
+no doubt, was to give some colorable excuse to the judges for rescuing
+Verres, the great paymaster, from the fangs of Cicero.
+
+Cicero's speech on the occasion--which, as speeches went in those days,
+was very short--is a model of sagacity and courage. He had to plead his
+own fitness, the unfitness of his adversary, and the wishes in the
+matter of the Sicilians. This had to be done with no halting phrases. It
+was not simply his object to convince a body of honest men that, with
+the view of getting at the truth, he would be the better advocate of the
+two. We may imagine that there was not a judge there, not a Roman
+present, who was not well aware of that before the orator began. It was
+needed that the absurdity of the comparison between them should be
+declared so loudly that the judges would not dare to betray the
+Sicilians, and to liberate the accused, by choosing the incompetent man.
+When Cicero rose to speak, there was probably not one of them of his own
+party, not a Consul, a Praetor, an AEdile, or a Quaestor, not a judge, not
+a Senator, not a hanger-on about the courts, but was anxious that Verres
+with his plunder should escape. Their hope of living upon the wealth of
+the provinces hung upon it. But if he could speak winged words--words
+that should fly all over Rome, that might fly also among subject
+nations--then would the judges not dare to carry out this portion of the
+scheme.
+
+"When," he says, "I had served as Quaestor in Sicily, and had left the
+province after such a fashion that all the Sicilians had a grateful
+memory of my authority there, though they had older friends on whom they
+relied much, they felt that I might be a bulwark to them in their need.
+These Sicilians, harassed and robbed, have now come to me in public
+bodies, and have implored me to undertake their defence. 'The time has
+come,' they say, 'not that I should look after the interest of this or
+that man, but that I should protect the very life and well-being of the
+whole province.' I am inclined by my sense of duty, by the faith which I
+owe them, by my pity for them, by the example of all good Romans before
+me, by the custom of the Republic, by the old constitution, to undertake
+this task, not as pertaining to my own interests, but to those of my
+close friends."[101] That was his own reason for undertaking the case.
+Then he reminds the judges of what the Roman people wished--the people
+who had felt with dismay the injury inflicted upon them by Sulla's
+withdrawal of all power from the Tribunes, and by the putting the whole
+authority of the bench into the hands of the Senators. "The Roman
+people, much as they have been made to suffer, regret nothing of that
+they have lost so much as the strength and majesty of the old judges. It
+is with the desire of having them back that they demand for the Tribunes
+their former power. It is this misconduct of the present judges that has
+caused them to ask for another class of men for the judgment-seat. By
+the fault and to the shame of the judges of to-day, the Censor's
+authority, which has hitherto always been regarded as odious and stern,
+even that is now requested by the people."[102] Then he goes on to show
+that, if justice is intended, this case will be put into the hands of
+him whom the Sicilians have themselves chosen. Had the Sicilians said
+that they were unwilling to trust their affairs to Caecilius because they
+had not known him, but were willing to trust him, Cicero, whom they did
+know, would not even that have been reasonable enough of itself? But the
+Sicilians had known both of them, had known Caecilius almost as well as
+Cicero, and had expressed themselves clearly. Much as they desired to
+have Cicero, they were as anxious not to have Caecilius. Even had they
+held their tongues about this, everybody would have known it; but they
+had been far from holding their tongues. "Yet you offer yourself to
+these most unwilling clients," he says, turning to Caecilius. "Yet you
+are ready to plead in a cause that does not belong to you! Yet you would
+defend those who would rather have no defender than such a one as
+you!"[103] Then he attacks Hortensius, the advocate for Verres. "Let him
+not think that, if I am to be employed here, the judges can be bribed
+without infinite danger to all concerned. In undertaking this cause of
+the Sicilians, I undertake also the cause of the people of Rome at
+large. It is not only that one wretched sinner should be crushed, which
+is what the Sicilians want, but that this terrible injustice should be
+stopped altogether, in compliance with the wishes of the people."[104]
+When we remember how this was spoken, in the presence of those very
+judges, in the presence of Hortensius himself, in reliance only on the
+public opinion which he was to create by his own words, we cannot but
+acknowledge that it is very fine.
+
+After that he again turns upon Caecilius. "Learn from me," he says, "how
+many things are expected from him who undertakes the accusation of
+another. If there be one of those qualities in you, I will give up to
+you all that you ask."[105] Caecilius was probably even now in alliance
+with Verres. He himself, when Quaestor, had robbed the people in the
+collection of the corn dues, and was unable therefore to include that
+matter in his accusation. "You can bring no charge against him on this
+head, lest it be seen that you were a partner with him in the
+business."[106] He ridicules him as to his personal insufficiency.
+"What, Caecilius! as to those practices of the profession without which
+an action such as this cannot be carried on, do you think that there is
+nothing in them? Need there be no skill in the business, no habit of
+speaking, no familiarity with the Forum, with the judgment-seats, and
+the laws?"[107] "I know well how difficult the ground is. Let me advise
+you to look into yourself, and to see whether you are able to do that
+kind of thing. Have you got voice for it, prudence, memory, wit? Are you
+able to expose the life of Verres, as it must be done, to divide it into
+parts and make everything clear? In doing all this, though nature should
+have assisted you"--as it has not at all, is of course implied--"if from
+your earliest childhood you had been imbued with letters; if you had
+learned Greek at Athens instead of at Lilybaeum--Latin in Rome instead of
+in Sicily--still would it not be a task beyond your strength to
+undertake such a case, so widely thought of, to complete it by your
+industry, and then to grasp it in your memory; to make it plain by your
+eloquence, and to support it with voice and strength sufficient? 'Have I
+these gifts,' you will ask. Would that I had! But from my childhood I
+have done all that I could to attain them."[108]
+
+Cicero makes his points so well that I would fain go through the whole
+speech, were it not that a similar reason might induce me to give
+abridgments of all his speeches. It may not be that the readers of these
+orations will always sympathize with the orator in the matter which he
+has in hand--though his power over words is so great as to carry the
+reader with him very generally, even at this distance of time--but the
+neatness with which the weapon is used, the effectiveness of the thrust
+for the purpose intended, the certainty with which the nail is hit on
+the head--never with an expenditure of unnecessary force, but always
+with the exact strength wanted for the purpose--these are the
+characteristics of Cicero's speeches which carry the reader on with a
+delight which he will want to share with others, as a man when he has
+heard a good story instantly wishes to tell it again. And with Cicero we
+are charmed by the modernness, by the tone of to-day, which his language
+takes. The rapid way in which he runs from scorn to pity, from pity to
+anger, from anger to public zeal, and then instantly to irony and
+ridicule, implies a lightness of touch which, not unreasonably,
+surprises us as having endured for so many hundred years. That poetry
+should remain to us, even lines so vapid as some of those in which Ovid
+sung of love, seems to be more natural, because verses, though they be
+light, must have been labored. But these words spoken by Cicero seem
+almost to ring in our ears as having come to us direct from a man's
+lips. We see the anger gathering on the brow of Hortensius, followed by
+a look of acknowledged defeat. We see the startled attention of the
+judges as they began to feel that in this case they must depart from
+their intended purpose. We can understand how Caecilius cowered, and
+found consolation in being relieved from his task. We can fancy how
+Verres suffered--Verres whom no shame could have touched--when all his
+bribes were becoming inefficient under the hands of the orator.
+
+Cicero was chosen for the task, and then the real work began. The work
+as he did it was certainly beyond the strength of any ordinary advocate.
+It was necessary that he should proceed to Sicily to obtain the evidence
+which was to be collected over the whole island. He must rate up, too,
+all the previous details of the life of this robber. He must be
+thoroughly prepared to meet the schemers on every point. He asked for a
+hundred and ten days for the purpose of getting up his case, but he took
+only fifty. We must imagine that, as he became more thoroughly versed in
+the intrigues of his adversaries, new lights came upon him. Were he to
+use the whole time allotted to him, or even half the time, and then make
+such an exposition of the criminal as he would delight to do were he to
+indulge himself with that "perpetua oratio" of which we hear, then the
+trial would be protracted till the coming of certain public games,
+during which the courts would not sit. There seem to have been three
+sets of games in his way--a special set for this year, to be given by
+Pompey, which were to last fifteen days; then the Ludi Romani, which
+were continued for nine days. Soon after that would come the games in
+honor of Victory--so soon that an adjournment over them would be
+obtained as a matter of course. In this way the trial would be thrown
+over into the next year, when Hortensius and one Metellus would be
+Consuls, and another Metellus would be the Praetor, controlling the
+judgment-seats. Glabrio was the Praetor for this present year. In Glabrio
+Cicero could put some trust. With Hortensius and the two Metelluses in
+power, Verres would be as good as acquitted. Cicero, therefore, had to
+be on the alert, so that in this unexpected way, by sacrificing his own
+grand opportunity for a speech, he might conquer the schemers. We hear
+how he went to Sicily in a little boat from an unknown port, so as to
+escape the dangers contrived for him by the friends of Verres.[109] If
+it could be arranged that the clever advocate should be kidnapped by a
+pirate, what a pleasant way would that be of putting an end to these
+abominable reforms! Let them get rid of Cicero, if only for a time, and
+the plunder might still be divided. Against all this he had to provide.
+When in Sicily he travelled sometimes on foot, for the sake of
+caution--never with the retinue to which he was entitled as a Roman
+senator. As a Roman senator he might have demanded free entertainment at
+any town he entered, at great cost to the town. But from all this he
+abstained, and hurried back to Rome with his evidence so quickly that he
+was able to produce it before the judges, so as to save the adjournments
+which he feared.
+
+Verres retired from the trial, pleading guilty, after hearing the
+evidence. Of the witnesses and of the manner in which they told the
+story, we have no account. The second speech which we have--the
+Divinatio, or speech against Caecilius, having been the first--is called
+the Actio Prima contra Verrem--"the first process against Verres." This
+is almost entirely confined to an exhortation to the judges. Cicero had
+made up his mind to make no speech about Verres till after the trial
+should be over. There would not be the requisite time. The evidence he
+must bring forward. And he would so appall these corrupt judges that
+they should not dare to acquit the accused. This Actio Prima contains
+the words in which he did appall the judges. As we read them, we pity
+the judges. There were fourteen, whose names we know. That there may
+have been many more is probable. There was the Praetor Urbanus of the
+day, Glabrio. With him were Metellus, one of the Praetors for the next
+year, and Caesonius, who, with Cicero himself, was AEdile designate. There
+were three Tribunes of the people and two military Tribunes. There was a
+Servilius, a Catulus, a Marcellus. Whom among these he suspected we can
+hardly say. Certainly he suspected Metellus. To Servilius[110] he paid
+an ornate compliment in one of the written orations published after the
+trial was over, from whence we may suppose that he was well inclined
+toward him. Of Glabrio he spoke well. The body, as a body, was of such a
+nature that he found it necessary to appall them. It is thus that he
+begins: "Not by human wisdom, O ye judges, but by chance, and by the
+aid, as it were, of the gods themselves, an event has come to pass by
+which the hatred now felt for your order, and the infamy attached to the
+judgment seat, may be appeased; for an opinion has gone abroad,
+disgraceful to the Republic, full of danger to yourselves--which is in
+the mouths of all men not only here in Rome but through all
+nations--that by these courts as they are now constituted, a man, if he
+be only rich enough, will never be condemned, though he be ever so
+guilty." What an exordium with which to begin a forensic pleading before
+a bench of judges composed of Praetors, AEdiles, and coming Consuls! And
+this at a time, too, when men's minds were still full of Sulla's power;
+when some were thinking that they too might be Sullas; while the idea
+was still strong that a few nobles ought to rule the Roman Empire for
+their own advantage and their own luxury! What words to address to a
+Metellus, a Catulus, and a Marcellus! I have brought before you such a
+wretch, he goes on to say, that by a just judgment upon him you can
+recover your favor with the people of Rome, and your credit with other
+nations. "This is a trial in which you, indeed, will have to judge this
+man who is accused, but in which also the Roman people will have to
+judge you. By what is done to him will be determined whether a man who
+is guilty, and at the same time rich, can possibly be condemned in
+Rome.[111]If the matter goes amiss here, all men will declare, not that
+better men should be selected out of your order, which would be
+impossible, but that another order of citizens must be named from which
+to select the judges."[112] This short speech was made. The witnesses
+were examined during nine days; then Hortensius, with hardly a struggle
+at a reply, gave way, and Verres stood condemned by his own verdict.
+
+When the trial was over, and Verres had consented to go into exile, and
+to pay whatever fine was demanded, the "perpetua oratio" which Cicero
+thought good to make on the matter was published to the world. It is
+written as though it was to have been spoken, with counterfeit tricks of
+oratory--with some tricks so well done in the first part of it as to
+have made one think that, when these special words were prepared, he
+must have intended to speak them. It has been agreed, however, that such
+was not the case. It consists of a narration of the villainies of
+Verres, and is divided into what have been called five different
+speeches, to which the following appellations are given: De Praetura
+Urbana, in which we are told what Verres did when he was city Praetor,
+and very many things also which he did before he came to that office, De
+Jurisdictione Siciliensi, in which is described his conduct as a Roman
+magistrate on the island; De Re Frumentaria, setting forth the
+abomination of his exactions in regard to the corn tax; De Signis,
+detailing the robberies he perpetuated in regard to statues and other
+ornaments; and De Suppliciis, giving an account of the murders he
+committed and the tortures he inflicted. A question is sometimes mooted
+in conversation whether or no the general happiness of the world has
+been improved by increasing civilization When the reader finds from
+these stories, as told by a leading Roman of the day, how men were
+treated under the Roman oligarchy--not only Greek allies but Romans
+also--I think he will be inclined to answer the question in favour of
+civilization.
+
+I can only give a few of the many little histories which have been
+preserved for us in this Actio Secunda; but perhaps these few may
+suffice to show how a great Roman officer could demean himself in his
+government. Of the doings of Verres before he went to Sicily I will
+select two. It became his duty on one occasion--a job which he seems to
+have sought for purpose of rapine--to go to Lampsacus, a town in Asia,
+as lieutenant, or legate, for Dolabella, who then had command in Asia.
+Lampsacus was on the Hellespont, an allied town of specially good
+repute. Here he is put up as a guest, with all the honors of a Roman
+officer, at the house of a citizen named Janitor. But he heard that
+another citizen, one Philodamus, had a beautiful daughter--an article
+with which we must suppose that Janitor was not equally well supplied.
+Verres, determined to get at the lady, orders that his creature Rubrius
+shall be quartered at the house of Philodamus. Philodamus, who from his
+rank was entitled to be burdened only with the presence of leading
+Romans, grumbles at this; but, having grumbled, consents, and having
+consented, does the best to make his house comfortable. He gives a great
+supper, at which the Romans eat and drink, and purposely create a
+tumult. Verres, we understand, was not there. The intention is that the
+girl shall be carried away and brought to him. In the middle of their
+cups the father is desired to produce his daughter; but this he refuses
+to do. Rubrius then orders the doors to be closed, and proceeds to
+ransack the house. Philodamus, who will not stand this, fetches his son,
+and calls his fellow-citizens around him. Rubrius succeeds in pouring
+boiling water over his host, but in the row the Romans get the worst of
+it. At last one of Verres's lictors--absolutely a Roman lictor--is
+killed, and the woman is not carried off. The man at least bore the
+outward signs of a lictor, but, according to Cicero, was in the pay of
+Verres as his pimp.
+
+So far Verres fails; and the reader, rejoicing at the courage of the
+father who could protect his own house even against Romans, begins to
+feel some surprise that this case should have been selected. So far the
+lieutenant had not done the mischief he had intended, but he soon
+avenges his failure. He induces Dolabella, his chief, to have Philodamus
+and his son carried off to Laodicea, and there tried before Nero, the
+then Proconsul, for killing the sham lictor. They are tried at Laodicea
+before Nero, Verres himself sitting as one of the judges, and are
+condemned. Then in the market place of the town, in the presence of each
+other, the father and son are beheaded--a thing, as Cicero says, very
+sad for all Asia to behold. All this had been done some years ago; and,
+nevertheless, Verres had been chosen Praetor, and sent to Sicily to
+govern the Sicilians.
+
+When Verres was Praetor at Rome--the year before he was sent to
+Sicily--it became his duty, or rather privilege, as he found it, to see
+that a certain temple of Castor in the city was given up in proper
+condition by the executors of a defunct citizen who had taken a contract
+for keeping it in repair. This man, whose name had been Junius, left a
+son, who was a Junius also under age, with a large fortune in charge of
+various trustees, tutors, as they were called, whose duty it was to
+protect the heir's interests. Verres, knowing of old that no property
+was so easily preyed on as that of a minor, sees at once that something
+may be done with the temple of Castor. The heir took oath, and to the
+extent of his property he was bound to keep the edifice in good repair.
+But Verres, when he made an inspection, finds everything to be in more
+than usually good order. There is not a scratch on the roof of which he
+can make use. Nothing has been allowed to go astray. Then "one of his
+dogs"--for he had boasted to his friend Ligur that he always went about
+with dogs to search out his game for him--suggested that some of the
+columns were out of the perpendicular. Verres does not know what this
+means; but the dog explains. All columns are, in fact, by strict
+measurement, more or less out of the perpendicular, as we are told that
+all eyes squint a little, though we do not see that they squint. But as
+columns ought to be perpendicular, here was a matter on which he might
+go to work. He does go to work. The trustees knowing their man--knowing
+also that in the present condition of Rome it was impossible to escape
+from an unjust Praetor without paying largely--went to his mistress and
+endeavored to settle the matter with her. Here we have an amusing
+picture of the way in which the affairs of the city were carried on in
+that lady's establishment; how she had her levee, took her bribes, and
+drove a lucrative trade. Doing, however, no good with her, the trustees
+settled with an agent to pay Verres two hundred thousand sesterces to
+drop the affair. This was something under L2000. But Verres repudiated
+the arrangement with scorn. He could do much better than that with such
+a temple and such a minor. He puts the repairs up to auction; and
+refusing a bid from the trustees themselves--the very persons who are
+the most interested in getting the work done, if there were work to
+do--has it knocked down to himself for five hundred and sixty thousand
+sesterces, or about L5000.[113] Then we are told how he had the
+pretended work done by the putting up of a rough crane. No real work is
+done, no new stones are brought, no money is spent. That is the way in
+which Verres filled his office as Praetor Urbanus; but it does not seem
+that any public notice is taken of his iniquities as long as he confined
+himself to little jobs such as this.
+
+Then we come to the affairs of Sicily--and the long list of robberies is
+commenced by which that province was made desolate. It seems that
+nothing gave so grand a scope to the greed of a public functionary who
+was at the same time governor and judge as disputed wills. It was not
+necessary that any of the persons concerned should dispute the will
+among them. Given the facts that a man had died and left property behind
+him, then Verres would find means to drag the heir into court, and
+either frighten him into payment of a bribe or else rob him of his
+inheritance. Before he left Rome for the province he heard that a large
+fortune had been left to one Dio on condition that he should put up
+certain statues in the market-place.[114] It was not uncommon for a man
+to desire the reputation of adorning his own city, but to choose that
+the expense should be borne by his heir rather than by himself. Failing
+to put up the statues, the heir was required to pay a fine to Venus
+Erycina--to enrich, that is, the worship of that goddess, who had a
+favorite temple under Mount Eryx. The statues had been duly erected.
+But, nevertheless, here there was an opening. So Verres goes to work,
+and in the name of Venus brings an action against Dio. The verdict is
+given, not in favor of Venus but in favor of Verres.
+
+This manner of paying honor to the gods, and especially to Venus, was
+common in Sicily. Two sons[115] received a fortune from their father,
+with a condition that, if some special thing were not done, a fine
+should be paid to Venus. The man had been dead twenty years ago. But
+"the dogs" which the Praetor kept were very sharp, and, distant as was
+the time, found out the clause. Action is taken against the two sons,
+who indeed gain their case; but they gain it by a bribe so enormous that
+they are ruined men. There was one Heraclius,[116] the son of Hiero, a
+nobleman of Syracuse, who received a legacy amounting to 3,000,000
+sesterces--we will say L24,000--from a relative, also a Heraclius. He
+had, too, a house full of handsome silver plate, silk and hangings, and
+valuable slaves. A man, "Dives equom, dives pictai vestis et auri."
+Verres heard, of course. He had by this time taken some Sicilian dogs
+into his service, men of Syracuse, and had learned from them that there
+was a clause in the will of the elder Heraclius that certain statues
+should be put up in the gymnasium of the city. They undertake to bring
+forward servants of the gymnasium who should say that the statues were
+never properly erected. Cicero tells us how Verres went to work, now in
+this court, now in that, breaking all the laws as to Sicilian
+jurisdiction, but still proceeding under the pretence of law, till he
+got everything out of the wretch--not only all the legacies from
+Heraclius, but every shilling, and every article left to the man by his
+father. There is a pretence of giving some of the money to the town of
+Syracuse; but for himself he takes all the valuables, the Corinthian
+vases, the purple hangings, what slaves he chooses. Then everything else
+is sold by auction. How he divided the spoil with the Syracusans, and
+then quarrelled with them, and how he lied as to the share taken by
+himself, will all be found in Cicero's narrative. Heraclius was of
+course ruined. For the stories of Epicrates and Sopater I must refer the
+reader to the oration. In that of Sopater there is the peculiarity that
+Verres managed to get paid by everybody all round.
+
+The story of Sthenius is so interesting that I cannot pass it by.
+Sthenius was a man of wealth and high standing, living at Therma in
+Sicily, with whom Verres often took up his abode; for, as governor, he
+travelled much about the island, always in pursuit of plunder. Sthenius
+had had his house full of beautiful things. Of all these Verres
+possessed himself--some by begging, some by demanding, and some by
+absolute robbery. Sthenius, grieved as he was to find himself pillaged,
+bore all this. The man was Roman Praetor, and injuries such as these had
+to be endured. At Therma, however, in the public place of the city,
+there were some beautiful statues. For these Verres longed, and desired
+his host to get them for him. Sthenius declared that this was
+impossible. The statues had, under peculiar circumstances, been
+recovered by Scipio Africanus from Carthage, and been restored by the
+Roman General to the Sicilians, from whom they had been taken, and had
+been erected at Therma. There was a peculiarly beautiful figure of
+Stesichorus, the poet, as an old man bent double, with a book in his
+hand--a very glorious work of art; and there was a goat--in bronze
+probably--as to which Cicero is at the pains of telling us that even he,
+unskilled as he was in such matters, could see its charms. No one had
+sharper eyes for such pretty ornaments than Cicero, or a more decided
+taste for them. But as Hortensius, his rival and opponent in this case,
+had taken a marble sphinx from Verres, he thought it expedient to show
+how superior he was to such matters. There was probably something of
+joke in this, as his predilections would no doubt be known to those he
+was addressing.[117]
+
+In the matter Sthenius was incorruptible, and not even the Praetor could
+carry them away without his aid. Cicero, who is very warm in praise of
+Sthenius, declares that "here at last Verres had found one town, the
+only one in the world, from which he was unable to carry away something
+of the public property by force, or stealth, or open command, or
+favor."[118] The governor was so disgusted with this that he abandoned
+Sthenius, leaving the house which he had plundered of everything, and
+betook himself to that of one Agathinus, who had a beautiful daughter,
+Callidama, who, with her husband, Dorotheus, lived with her father They
+were enemies of Sthenius, and we are given to understand that Verres
+ingratiated himself with them partly for the sake of Callidama, who
+seems very quickly to have been given up to him,[119] and partly that he
+might instigate them to bring actions against Sthenius. This is done
+with great success; so that Sthenius is forced to run away, and betake
+himself, winter as it was, across the seas to Rome. It has already been
+told that when he was at Rome an action was brought against him by
+Verres for having run away when he was under judgment, in which Cicero
+defended him, and in which he was acquitted. In the teeth of his
+acquittal, Verres persecuted the man by every form of law which came to
+his hands as Praetor, but always in opposition to the law. There is an
+audacity about the man's proceedings, in his open contempt of the laws
+which it was his special duty to carry out, making us feel how confident
+he was that he could carry everything before him in Rome by means of his
+money. By robbery and concealing his robberies, by selling his judgments
+in such a way that he should maintain some reticence by ordinary
+precaution, he might have made much money, as other governors had done.
+But he resolved that it would pay him better to rob everywhere openly,
+and then, when the day of reckoning came, to buy the judges wholesale.
+As to shame at such doings, there was no such feelings left among
+Romans.
+
+Before he comes to the story of Sthenius, Cicero makes a grandly
+ironical appeal to the bench before him: "Yes, O judges, keep this man;
+keep him in the State! Spare him, preserve him so that he, too, may sit
+with us as a judge here so that he, too, may, with impartiality, advise
+us, as a Senator, what may be best for us as to peace and war! Not that
+we need trouble ourselves as to his senatorial duties. His authority
+would be nothing. When would he dare, or when would he care, to come
+among us? Unless it might be in the idle month of February, when would a
+man so idle, so debauched, show himself in the Senate-house? Let him
+come and show himself. Let him advise us to attack the Cretans; to
+pronounce the Greeks of Byzantium free; to declare Ptolemy King.[120]
+Let him speak and vote as Hortensius may direct. This will have but
+little effect upon our lives or our property. But beyond this there is
+something we must look to; something that would be distrusted; something
+that every good man has to fear! If by chance this man should escape out
+of our hands, he would have to sit there upon that bench and be a judge.
+He would be called upon to pronounce on the lives of a Roman citizen. He
+would be the right-hand officer in the army of this man here,[121] of
+this man who is striving to be the lord and ruler of our judgment-seats.
+The people of Rome at least refuse this! This at least cannot be
+endured!"
+
+The third of these narratives tells us how Verres managed in his
+province that provision of corn for the use of Rome, the collection of
+which made the possession of Sicily so important to the Romans. He
+begins with telling his readers--as he does too frequently--how great
+and peculiar is the task he has undertaken; and he uses an argument of
+which we cannot but admit the truth, though we doubt whether any modern
+advocate would dare to put it forward. We must remember, however, that
+Romans were not accustomed to be shamefaced in praising themselves. What
+Cicero says of himself all others said also of themselves; only Cicero
+could say it better than others. He reminds us that he who accuses
+another of any crime is bound to be especially free from that crime
+himself. "Would you charge any one as a thief? you must be clear from
+any suspicion of even desiring another man's property. Have you brought
+a man up for malice or cruelty? take care that you be not found
+hard-hearted. Have you called a man a seducer or an adulterer? be sure
+that your own life shows no trace of such vices. Whatever you would
+punish in another, that you must avoid yourself. A public accuser would
+be intolerable, or even a caviller, who should inveigh against sins for
+which he himself is called in question. But in this man I find all
+wickednesses combined. There is no lust, no iniquity, no shamelessness
+of which his life does not supply with ample evidence." The nature of
+the difficulty to which Cicero is thus subjected is visible enough. As
+Verres is all that is bad, so must he, as accuser, be all that is good;
+which is more, we should say, than any man would choose to declare of
+himself! But he is equal to the occasion. "In regard to this man, O
+judges, I lay down for myself the law as I have stated it. I must so
+live that I must clearly seem to be, and always have been, the very
+opposite of this man, not only in my words and deeds, but as to that
+arrogance and impudence which you see in him." Then he shows how
+opposite he is to Verres at any rate, in impudence! "I am not sorry to
+see," he goes on to say, "that that life which has always been the life
+of my own choosing, has now been made a necessity to me by the law which
+I have laid down for myself."[122] Mr. Pecksniff spoke of himself in the
+same way, but no one, I think, believed him. Cicero probably was
+believed. But the most wonderful thing is, that his manner of life
+justified what he said of himself. When others of his own order were
+abandoned to lust, iniquity, and shamelessness, he lived in purity, with
+clean hands, doing good as far as was in his power to those around him.
+A laugh will be raised at his expense in regard to that assertion of his
+that, even in the matter of arrogance, his conduct should be the
+opposite of that of Verres. But this will come because I have failed to
+interpret accurately the meaning of those words, "oris oculorumque illa
+contumacia ac superbia quam videtis." Verres, as we can understand, had
+carried himself during the trial with a bragging, brazen, bold face,
+determined to show no shame as to his own doings. It is in this, which
+was a matter of manner and taste, that Cicero declares that he will be
+the man's opposite as well as in conduct. As to the ordinary boastings,
+by which it has to be acknowledged that Cicero sometimes disgusts his
+readers, it will be impossible for us to receive a just idea of his
+character without remembering that it was the custom of a Roman to
+boast. We wait to have good things said of us, or are supposed to wait.
+The Roman said them of himself. The "veni, vidi, vici" was the ordinary
+mode of expression in those times, and in earlier times among the
+Greeks.[123] This is distasteful to us; and it will probably be
+distasteful to those who come after us, two or three hundred years
+hence, that this or that British statesman should have made himself an
+Earl or a Knight of the Garter. Now it is thought by many to be proper
+enough. It will shock men in future days that great peers or rich
+commoners should have bargained for ribbons and lieutenancies and
+titles. Now it is the way of the time. Though virtue and vice may be
+said to remain the same from all time to all time, the latitudes allowed
+and the deviations encouraged in this or the other age must be
+considered before the character of a man can be discovered. The
+boastings of Cicero have been preserved for us. We have to bethink
+ourselves that his words are 2000 years old. There is such a touch of
+humanity in them, such a feeling of latter-day civilization and almost
+of Christianity, that we are apt to condemn what remains in them of
+paganism, as though they were uttered yesterday. When we come to the
+coarseness of his attacks, his descriptions of Piso by-and-by, his abuse
+of Gabinius, and his invectives against Antony; when we read his altered
+opinions, as shown in the period of Caesar's dominion, his flattery of
+Caesar when in power, and his exultations when Caesar has been killed;
+when we find that he could be coarse in his language and a bully, and
+servile--for it has all to be admitted--we have to reflect under what
+circumstances, under what surroundings, and for what object were used
+the words which displease us. Speaking before the full court at this
+trial, he dared to say he knew how to live as a man and to carry himself
+as a gentleman. As men and gentlemen were then, he was justified.
+
+The description of Verres's rapacity in regard to the corn tax is long
+and complex, and need hardly be followed at length, unless by those who
+desire to know how the iniquity of such a one could make the most of an
+imposition which was in itself very bad, and pile up the burden till the
+poor province was unable to bear it. There were three kinds of
+imposition as to corn. The first, called the "decumanum," was simply a
+tithe.
+
+The producers through the island had to furnish Rome with a tenth of
+their produce, and it was the Praetor's duty, or rather that of the
+Quaestor under the Praetor, to see that the tithe was collected. How
+Verres saw to this himself, and how he treated the Sicilian husbandmen
+in regard to the tithe, is so told that we are obliged to give the man
+credit for an infinite fertility of resources. Then there is the
+"emptum," or corn bought for the use of Rome, of which there were two
+kinds. A second tithe had to be furnished at a price fixed by the Roman
+Senate, which price was considered to be below that of its real value,
+and then 800,000 bushels were purchased, or nominally purchased, at a
+price which was also fixed by the Senate, but which was nearer to the
+real value. Three sesterces a bushel for the first and four for the
+last, were the prices fixed at this time. For making these payments vast
+sums of money were remitted to Verres, of which the accounts were so
+kept that it was hard to say whether any found its way into the hands of
+the farmers who undoubtedly furnished the corn. The third corn tax was
+the "aestimatum." This consisted of a certain fixed quantity which had to
+be supplied to the Praetor for the use of his governmental
+establishment--to be supplied either in grain or in money. What such a
+one as Verres would do with his, the reader may conceive.
+
+All this was of vital importance to Rome. Sicily and Africa were the
+granaries from which Rome was supplied with its bread. To get supplies
+from a province was necessary. Rich men have servants in order that they
+may live at ease themselves. So it was with the Romans to whom the
+provinces acted as servants. It was necessary to have a sharp agent,
+some Proconsul or Propraetor; but when there came one so sharp as Verres,
+all power of recreating supplies would for a time be destroyed. Even
+Cicero boasted that in a time of great scarcity, he, being then Quaestor
+in Sicily, had sent extraordinary store of corn over to the city.[124]
+But he had so done it as to satisfy all who were concerned.
+
+Verres, in his corn dealings with the Sicilians, had a certain friend,
+companion, and minister--one of his favorite dogs, perhaps we may call
+him--named Apronius, whom Cicero specially describes. The description I
+must give, because it is so powerful; because it shows us how one man
+could in those days speak of another in open court before all the world;
+because it affords us an instance of the intensity of hatred which the
+orator could throw into his words; but I must hide it in the original
+language, as I could not translate it without offence.[125]
+
+Then we have a book devoted to the special pillage of statues and other
+ornaments, which, for the genius displayed in story-telling, is perhaps
+of all the Verrine orations the most amusing. The Greek people had
+become in a peculiar way devoted to what we generally call Art. We are
+much given to the collecting of pictures, china, bronze, and marbles,
+partly from love of such things, partly from pride in ornamenting our
+houses so as to excite the admiration of others, partly from a feeling
+that money so invested is not badly placed with a view to future
+returns. All these feelings operated with the Greeks to a much greater
+extent. Investments in consols and railway shares were not open to them.
+Money they used to lend at usury, no doubt, but with a great chance of
+losing it. The Greek colonists were industrious, were covetous, and
+prudent. From this it had come to pass that, as they made their way
+about the world--to the cities which they established round the
+Mediterranean--they collected in their new homes great store of
+ornamental wealth. This was done with much profusion at Syracuse, a
+Greek city in Sicily, and spread from them over the whole island. The
+temples of the gods were filled with the works of the great Greek
+artists, and every man of note had his gallery. That Verres, hog as he
+is described to have been, had a passion for these things, is manifest
+to us. He came to his death at last in defence of some favorite images.
+He had returned to Rome by means of Caesar's amnesty, and Marc Antony had
+him murdered because he would not surrender some treasures of art. When
+we read the De Signis--About Statues--we are led to imagine that the
+search after these things was the chief object of the man throughout his
+three years of office--as we have before been made to suppose that all
+his mind and time had been devoted to the cheating of the Sicilians in
+the matter of corn. But though Verres loved these trinkets, it was not
+altogether for himself that he sought them. Only one third of his
+plunder was for himself. Senators, judges, advocates, Consuls, and
+Praetors could be bribed with articles of _vertu_ as well as with money.
+
+There are eleven separate stories told of these robberies. I will give
+very shortly the details of one or two. There was one Marcus Heius, a
+rich citizen of Messana, in whose house Verres took great delight.
+Messana itself was very useful to him, and the Mamertines, as the people
+of Messana were called were his best friends in all Sicily: for he made
+Messana the depot of his plunder, and there he caused to be built at the
+expense of the Government an enormous ship called the _Cybea_,[126] in
+which his treasures were carried out of the island. He therefore
+specially favored Messana, and the district of Messana was supposed to
+have been scourged by him with lighter rods than those used elsewhere in
+Sicily. But this man Heius had a chapel, very sacred, in which were
+preserved four specially beautiful images. There was a Cupid by
+Praxiteles, and a bronze Hercules by Myro, and two Can[oe]phrae by
+Polycletus. These were treasures which all the world came to see, and
+which were open to be seen by all the world. These Verres took away, and
+caused accounts to be forged in which it was made to appear that he had
+bought them for trifling sums. It seems that some forced assent had been
+obtained from Heius as to the transaction. Now there was a plan in vogue
+for making things pleasant for a Proconsul retiring from his government,
+in accordance with which a deputation would proceed from the province to
+Rome to declare how well and kindly the Proconsul had behaved in his
+government. The allies, even when they had been, as it were, skinned
+alive by their governor, were constrained to send their deputations.
+Deputations were got up in Sicily from Messana and Syracuse, and with
+the others from Messana came this man Heius. Heius did not wish to tell
+about his statues; but he was asked questions, and was forced to answer.
+Cicero informs us how it all took place. "He was a man," he said--this
+is what Cicero tells us that Heius said--"who was well esteemed in his
+own country, and would wish you"--you judges--"to think well of his
+religious spirit and of his personal dignity. He had come here to praise
+Verres because he had been required to do so by his fellow-citizens. He,
+however, had never kept things for sale in his own house; and had he
+been left to himself, nothing would have induced him to part with the
+sacred images which had been left to him by his ancestors as the
+ornaments of his own chapel.[127] Nevertheless, he had come to praise
+Verres, and would have held his tongue had it been possible."
+
+Cicero finishes his catalogue by telling us of the manifold robberies
+committed by Verres in Syracuse, especially from the temples of the
+gods; and he begins his account of the Syracusan iniquities by drawing a
+parallel between two Romans whose names were well known in that city:
+Marcellus, who had besieged it as an enemy and taken it, and Verres, who
+had been sent to govern it in peace. Marcellus had saved the lives of
+the Syracusans; Verres had made the Forum to run with their blood. The
+harbor which had held its own against Marcellus, as we may read in our
+Livy, had been wilfully opened by Verres to Cilician pirates. This
+Syracuse which had been so carefully preserved by its Roman conqueror,
+the most beautiful of all the Greek cities on the face of the earth--so
+beautiful that Marcellus had spared to it all its public ornaments--had
+been stripped bare by Verres. There was the temple of Minerva from which
+he had taken all the pictures. There were doors to this temple of such
+beauty that books had been written about them. He stripped the ivory
+ornaments from them, and the golden balls with which they had been made
+splendid. He tore off from them the head of the Gorgon and carried it
+away, leaving them to be rude doors, Goth that he was!
+
+And he took the Sappho from the Prytaneum, the work of Silanion! a thing
+of such beauty that no other man can have the like of it in his own
+private house; yet Verres has it--a man hardly fit to carry such a work
+of art as a burden, not possess it as a treasure of his own. "What,
+too!" he says, "have you not stolen Paean from the temple of
+AEsculapius--a statue so remarkable for its beauty, so well-known for the
+worship attached to it, that all the world has been wont to visit it?
+What! has not the image of Aristaeus been taken by you from the temple of
+Bacchus? Have you not even stolen the statue of Jupiter Imperator, so
+sacred in the eyes of all men--that Jupiter which the Greeks call
+Ourios? You have not hesitated to rob the temple of Proserpine of the
+lovely head in Parian marble."[128] Then Cicero speaks of the worship
+due to all these gods as though he himself believed in their godhead. As
+he had begun this chapter with the Mamertines of Messana, so he ends it
+with an address to them. "It is well that you should come, you alone out
+of all the provinces, and praise Verres here in Rome. But what can you
+say for him? Was it not your duty to have built a ship for the Republic?
+You have built none such, but have constructed a huge private
+transport-vessel for Verres. Have you not been exempted from your tax on
+corn? Have you not been exempted in regard to naval and military
+recruits? Have you not been the receptacle of all his stolen goods? They
+will have to confess, these Mamertines, that many a ship laden with his
+spoils has left their port, and especially this huge transport-ship
+which they built for him!"
+
+In the De Suppliciis--the treatise about punishments, as the last
+division of this process is called--Cicero tells the world how Verres
+exacted vengeance from those who were opposed to him, and with what
+horrid cruelty he raged against his enemies. The stories, indeed, are
+very dreadful. It is harrowing to think that so evil a man should have
+been invested with powers so great for so bad a purpose. But that which
+strikes a modern reader most is the sanctity attached to the name of a
+Roman citizen, and the audacity with which the Roman Proconsul
+disregarded that sanctity. "Cives Romanus" is Cicero's cry from the
+beginning to the end. No doubt he is addressing himself to Romans, and
+seeking popularity, as he always did. But, nevertheless, the demands
+made upon the outside world at large by the glory of that appellation
+are astonishing, even when put forward on such an occasion as this. One
+Gavius escapes from a prison in Syracuse, and, making his way to
+Messana, foolishly boasts that he would be soon over in Italy, out of
+the way of Praetor Verres and his cruelties. Verres, unfortunately, is in
+Messana, and soon hears from some of his friends, the Mamertines, what
+Gavius was saying. He at once orders Gavius to be flogged in public.
+"Cives Romanus sum!" exclaims Gavius, no doubt truly. It suits Verres to
+pretend to disbelieve this, and to declare that the man is a runagate
+slave. The poor wretch still cries "Cives Romanus!" and trusts alone to
+that appeal. Whereupon Verres puts up a cross on the sea-shore, and has
+the man crucified in sight of Italy, so that he shall be able to see the
+country of which he is so proud. Whether he had done anything to deserve
+crucifixion, or flogging, or punishment at all, we are not told. The
+accusation against Verres is not for crucifying the man, but for
+crucifying the Roman. It is on this occasion that Cicero uses the words
+which have become proverbial as to the iniquity of this proceeding.[129]
+During the telling of this story he explains this doctrine, claiming for
+the Roman citizen, all the world over, some such protection as
+freemasons are supposed to give each other, whether known or unknown.
+"Men of straw," he says, "of no special birth, go about the world. They
+resort to places they have never seen before, where they know none, and
+none know them. Here, trusting to their claim solely, they feel
+themselves to be safe--not only where our magistrates are to be found,
+who are bound both by law and by opinion, not only among other Roman
+citizens who speak their language and follow the same customs, but
+abroad, over the whole world, they find this to be sufficient
+protection."[130] Then he goes on to say that if any Praetor may at his
+will put aside this sanctity, all the provinces, all the kingdoms, all
+the free states, all the world abroad, will very soon lose the feeling.
+
+But the most remarkable story is that told of a certain pirate captain.
+Verres had been remiss in regard to the pirates--very cowardly, indeed,
+if we are to believe Cicero. Piracy in the Mediterranean was at that
+time a terrible drawback to trade--that piracy that a year or two
+afterward Pompey was effectual in destroying. A governor in Sicily had,
+among other special duties, to keep a sharp lookout for the pirates.
+This Verres omitted so entirely that these scourges of the sea soon
+learned that they might do almost as they pleased on the Sicilian
+coasts. But it came to pass that on one day a pirate vessel fell by
+accident into the hands of the governor's officers. It was not taken,
+Cicero says, but was so overladen that it was picked up almost
+sinking.[131] It was found to be full of fine, handsome men, of silver
+both plated and coined, and precious stuffs. Though not "taken," it was
+"found," and carried into Syracuse. Syracuse is full of the news, and
+the first demand is that the pirates, according to Roman custom, shall
+all be killed. But this does not suit Verres. The slave-markets of the
+Roman Empire are open, and there are men among the pirates whom it will
+suit him better to sell than to kill. There are six musicians,
+"symphoniacos homines," whom he sends as a present to a friend at Rome.
+But the people of Syracuse are very much in earnest. They are too sharp
+to be put off with pretences, and they count the number of slaughtered
+pirates. There are only some useless, weak, ugly old fellows beheaded
+from day to day; and being well aware how many men it must have taken to
+row and manage such a vessel, they demand that the full crew shall be
+brought to the block. "There is nothing in victory more sweet," says
+Cicero, "no evidence more sure, than to see those whom you did fear, but
+have now got the better of, brought out to tortures or death."[132]
+Verres is so much frightened by the resolution of the citizens that he
+does not dare to neglect their wishes. There are lying in the prisons of
+Syracuse a lot of prisoners, Roman citizens, of whom he is glad to rid
+himself. He has them brought out, with their heads wrapped up so that
+they shall not be known, and has them beheaded instead of the pirates! A
+great deal is said, too, about the pirate captain--the arch-pirate, as
+he is called. There seems to have been some money dealings personally
+between him and Verres, on account of which Verres kept him hidden. At
+any rate, the arch-pirate was saved. "In such a manner this celebrated
+victory is managed.[133] The pirate ship is taken, and the chief pirate
+is allowed to escape. The musicians are sent to Rome. The men who are
+good-looking and young are taken to the Praetor's house. As many Roman
+citizens as will fill their places are carried out as public enemies,
+and are tortured and killed! All the gold and silver and precious stuffs
+are made a prize of by Verres!"
+
+Such are the accusations brought against this wonderful man--the truth
+of which has, I think, on the whole been admitted. The picture of Roman
+life which it displays is wonderful, that such atrocities should have
+been possible; and equally so of provincial subjection, that such
+cruelties should have been endured. But in it all the greatest wonder is
+that there should have risen up a man so determined to take the part of
+the weak against the strong with no reward before him, apparently with
+no other prospect than that of making himself odious to the party to
+which he belonged. Cicero was not a Gracchus, anxious to throw himself
+into the arms of the people; he was an oligarch by conviction, born to
+oligarchy, bred to it, convinced that by it alone could the Roman
+Republic be preserved. But he was convinced also that unless these
+oligarchs could be made to do their duty the Republic could not stand.
+Therefore it was that he dared to defy his own brethren, and to make the
+acquittal of Verres an impossibility. I should be inclined to think that
+the day on which Hortensius threw up the sponge, and Verres submitted to
+banishment and fine, was the happiest in the orator's life.
+
+Verres was made to pay a fine which was very insufficient for his
+crimes, and then to retire into comfortable exile. From this he returned
+to Rome when the Roman exiles were amnestied, and was shortly afterward
+murdered by Antony, as has been told before.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+_CICERO AS AEDILE AND PRAETOR._
+
+
+[Sidenote: B.C. 69, aetat. 38.]
+
+The year after the trial of Verres was that of Cicero's AEdileship. We
+know but little of him in the performance of the duties of this office,
+but we may gather that he performed them to the satisfaction of the
+people. He did not spend much money for their amusements, although it
+was the custom of AEdiles to ruin themselves in seeking popularity after
+this fashion; and yet when, two years afterward, he solicited the
+Praetorship from the people, he was three times elected as first Praetor
+in all the comitia--three separate elections having been rendered
+necessary by certain irregularities and factious difficulties. To all
+the offices, one after another, he was elected in his first year--the
+first year possible in accordance with his age--and was elected first in
+honor, the first as Praetor, and then the first as Consul. This, no
+doubt, was partly due to his compliance with those rules for canvassing
+which his brother Quintus is said to have drawn out, and which I have
+quoted; but it proves also the trust which was felt in him by the
+people. The candidates, for the most part, were the candidates for the
+aristocracy. They were put forward with the idea that thus might the
+aristocratic rule of Rome be best maintained. Their elections were
+carried on by bribery, and the people were for the most part indifferent
+to the proceeding. Whether it might be a Verres, or an Antony, or a
+Hortensius, they took the money that was going. They allowed themselves
+to be delighted with the games, and they did as they were bid. But every
+now and then there came up a name which stirred them, and they went to
+the voting pens--ovilia--with a purpose of their own. When such a
+candidate came forward, he was sure to be first. Such had been Marius,
+and such had been the great Pompey, and such was Cicero. The two former
+were men successful in war, who gained the voices of the people by their
+victories. Cicero gained them by what he did inside the city. He could
+afford not to run into debt and ruin himself during his AEdileship, as
+had been common with AEdiles, because he was able to achieve his
+popularity in another way. It was the chief duty of the AEdiles to look
+after the town generally--to see to the temples of the gods, to take
+care that houses did not tumble down, to look to the cleansing of the
+streets, and to the supply of water. The markets were under them, and
+the police, and the recurrent festivals. An active man, with
+common-sense, such as was Cicero, no doubt did his duty as AEdile well.
+
+He kept up his practice as an advocate during his years of office. We
+have left to us the part of one speech and the whole of another spoken
+during this period. The former was in favor of Fonteius, whom the Gauls
+prosecuted for plundering them as Propraetor, and the latter is a civil
+case on behalf of Caecina, addressed to the "Recuperatores," as had been
+that for Marcus Tullius. The speech for Fonteius is remarkable as being
+as hard against the provincial Gauls as his speech against Verres had
+been favorable to the Sicilians. But the Gauls were barbarians, whereas
+the Sicilians were Greeks. And it should be always remembered that
+Cicero spoke as an advocate, and that the praise and censure of an
+advocate require to be taken with many grains of salt. Nothing that
+these wretched Gauls could say against a Roman citizen ought to be
+accepted in evidence! "All the Romans," he says, "who have been in the
+province wish well to Fonteius. Would you rather believe these
+Gauls--led by what feeling? By the opinion of men! Is the opinion, then,
+of your enemies of greater weight than that of your fellow-citizens, or
+is it the greater credibility of the witnesses? Would you prefer, then,
+unknown men to known--dishonest men to honest--foreigners to your own
+countrymen--greedy men to those who come before you for nothing--men of
+no religion to those who fear the gods--those who hate the Empire and
+the name of Rome to allies and citizens who are good and faithful?"[134]
+In every word of this he begs the question so as to convince us that his
+own case was weak; and when he makes a final appeal to the pity of the
+judges we are sure that Fonteius was guilty. He tells the judges that
+the poor mother of the accused man has no other support than this son,
+and that there is a sister, one of the virgins devoted to the service of
+Vesta, who, being a vestal virgin, cannot have sons of her own, and is
+therefore entitled to have her brother preserved for her. When we read
+such arguments as these, we are sure that Fonteius had misused the
+Gauls. We believe that he was acquitted, because we are told that he
+bought a house in Rome soon afterward; but we feel that he escaped by
+the too great influence of his advocate. We are driven to doubt whether
+the power over words which may be achieved by a man by means of natural
+gifts, practice, and erudition, may not do evil instead of good. A man
+with such a tongue as that of Cicero will make the listener believe
+almost whatever he will; and the advocate is restrained by no horror of
+falsehood. In his profession alone it is considered honorable to be a
+bulwark to deception, and to make the worse appear the better cause.
+Cicero did so when the occasion seemed to him to require it, and has
+been accused of hypocrisy in consequence. There is a passage in one of
+the dialogues, De Oratore, which has been continually quoted against him
+because the word "fibs" has been used with approval. The orator is told
+how it may become him to garnish his good story with little white
+lies--"mendaciunculis."[135] The advice does not indeed refer to facts,
+or to evidence, or to arguments. It goes no farther than to suggest that
+amount of exaggeration which is used by every teller of a good story in
+order that the story may be good. Such "mendaciuncula" are in the mouth
+of every diner-out in London, and we may pity the dinner-parties at
+which they are not used. Reference is made to them now because the use
+of the word by Cicero, having been misunderstood by some who have
+treated his name with severity, has been brought forward in proof of his
+falsehood. You shall tell a story about a very little man, and say that
+he is only thirty-six inches. You know very well that he is more than
+four feet high. That will be a "mendaciunculum," according to Cicero.
+The phrase has been passed on from one enemy to another, till the little
+fibs of Cicero's recommending have been supposed to be direct lies
+suggested by him to all advocates, and therefore continually used by him
+as an advocate. They have been only the garnishing of his drolleries. As
+an advocate, he was about as false and about as true as an advocate of
+our own day.[136] That he was not paid, and that our English barristers
+are paid for the work they do, makes, I think, no difference either in
+the innocency or the falseness of the practice. I cannot but believe
+that, hereafter, an improved tone of general feeling will forbid a man
+of honor to use arguments which he thinks to be untrue, or to make
+others believe that which he does not believe himself. Such is not the
+state of things now in London, nor was it at Rome in Cicero's time.
+There are touches of eloquence in the plea for Fonteius, but the reader
+will probably agree with me that the orator was well aware that the late
+governor who was on his trial had misused those unfortunate Gauls.
+
+In the year following that of Cicero's AEdileship were written the first
+of his epistles which have come to us. He was then not yet thirty-nine
+years old--B.C. 68--and during that year and the next seven were written
+eleven letters, all to Atticus. Those to his other friends--Ad
+Familiares, as we have been accustomed to call them; Ad Diversos, they
+are commonly called now--began only with the close of his consular year.
+How it has come to pass that there have been preserved only those which
+were written after a period of life at which most men cease to be free
+correspondents, cannot be said with certainty. It has probably been
+occasioned by the fact that he caused his letters to be preserved as
+soon as he himself perceived how great would be their value. Of the
+nature of their value it is hardly possible to speak too highly. I am
+not prepared, indeed, to agree with the often quoted assertion of
+Cornelius Nepos that he who has read his letters to Atticus will not
+lack much of the history of those days.[137]
+
+A man who should have read them and nothing else, even in the days of
+Augustus, would not have learned much of the preceding age. But if not
+for the purpose of history, the letters generally have, if read aright,
+been all but enough for the purpose of biography. With a view to the
+understanding of the man's character, they have, I think, been enough.
+From them such a flood of light has been turned upon the writer that all
+his nobility and all his defects, all his aspirations and all his
+vacillations, have been made visible. We know how human he was, and how,
+too, he was only human--how he sighed for great events, and allowed
+himself to think sometimes that they could be accomplished by small
+man[oe]uvres--how like a man he could be proud of his work and
+boast--how like a man he could despair and almost die. But I wish it to
+be acknowledged, by those who read his letters in order that they may
+also read his character, that they were, when written, private letters,
+intended to tell the truth, and that if they are to be believed in
+reference to his weaknesses, they are also to be believed in reference
+to his strength. If they are singularly transparent as to the
+man--opening, especially to Atticus, the doors of his soul more
+completely than would even any girl of the nineteenth century when
+writing to her bosom friend--they must be taken as being more honestly
+true. To regard the aspirations as hypocritical, and only the meaner
+effusions of his mind as emblematic of the true man, is both
+unreasonable and uncharitable. Nor, I think, will that reader grasp the
+way to see the truth who cannot teach himself what has in Cicero's case,
+been the effect of daring to tell to his friend an unvarnished tale.
+When with us some poor thought does make its way across our minds, we do
+not sit down and write it to another, nor, if we did, would an
+immortality be awarded to the letter. If one of us were to lose his
+all--as Cicero lost his all when he was sent into exile--I think it
+might well be that he should for a time be unmanned; but he would either
+not write, or, in writing, would hide much of his feelings. On losing
+his Tullia, some father of to-day would keep it all in his heart, would
+not maunder out his sorrows. Even with our truest love for our friends,
+some fear is mingled which forbids the use of open words. Whether this
+be for good or for evil I will not say, but it is so. Cicero, whether he
+did or did not know that his letters would live, was impeded by no such
+fear. He said everything that there was within him--being in this, I
+should say, quite as unlike to other Romans of the day as he was to
+ourselves. In the collection as it has come to us there are about fifty
+letters--not from Cicero--written to Cicero by his brother, by Decimus
+Brutus, by Plancus, and others. It will, I think, be admitted that their
+tone is quite different from that used by himself. There are none,
+indeed, from Atticus--none written under terms of such easy friendship
+as prevailed when many were written by Cicero himself. It will probably
+be acknowledged that his manner of throwing himself open to his
+correspondent was peculiar to him. If this be so, he should surely have
+the advantage as well as the disadvantage of his own mode of utterance.
+The reader who allows himself to think that the true character of the
+man is to be read in the little sly things he said to Atticus, but that
+the nobler ideas were merely put forth to cajole the public, is as
+unfair to himself as he is to Cicero.
+
+In reading the entire correspondence--the letters from Cicero either to
+Atticus or to others--it has to be remembered that in the ordinary
+arrangement of them made by Graevius[138] they are often incorrectly
+paced in regard to chronology. In subsequent times efforts have been
+made to restore them to their proper position, and so they should be
+read. The letters to Atticus and those Ad Diversos have generally been
+published separately. For the ordinary purpose of literary pleasure they
+may perhaps be best read in that way. The tone of them is different. The
+great bulk of the correspondence is political, or quasi-political. The
+manner is much more familiar, much less severe--though not on that
+account indicating less seriousness--in those written to Atticus than in
+the others. With one or two signal exceptions, those to Atticus are
+better worth reading. The character of the writer may perhaps be best
+gathered from divided perusal; but for a general understanding of the
+facts of Cicero's life, the whole correspondence should be taken as it
+was written. It has been published in this shape as well as in the
+other, and will be used in this shape in my effort to portray the life
+of him who wrote them.[139]
+
+[Sidenote: B.C. 68, aetat. 39.]
+
+We have three letters written when he was thirty-eight, in the year
+after his AEdileship. In the first he tells his friend of the death of
+his cousin, Lucius Cicero, who had travelled with him into Sicily, and
+alludes to the disagreements which had taken place between Pomponia, the
+sister of Atticus, and her husband, Quintus Cicero--our Cicero's
+brother. Marcus, in all that he says of his brother, makes the best of
+him. That Quintus was a scholar and a man of parts there can be no
+doubt; one, too, who rose to high office in the Republic. But he was
+arrogant, of harsh temper, cruel to those dependent on him, and
+altogether unimbued with the humanity which was the peculiar
+characteristic of his brother. "When I found him to be in the wrong,"
+says Cicero, in his first letter, "I wrote to him as to a brother whom
+I loved; but as to one younger than myself, and whom I was bound to tell
+of his fault." As is usual with correspondents, half the letter is taken
+up with excuses for not writing sooner; then he gives commissions for
+the purchase of statues for his Tusculan villa, of which we now hear for
+the first time, and tells his friend how his wife, Terentia, sends her
+love, though she is suffering from the gout. Tullia also, the dear
+little Tullia, "deliciae nostrae,"[140]sends her love. In the next, he
+says how a certain house which Atticus had intended to purchase had been
+secured by Fonteius for 130,000 sesterces--something over L1000, taking
+the sesterce at 2 _d_. This no doubt was part of the plunder which
+Fonteius had taken from the Gauls. Quintus is getting on better with his
+wife. Then he tells his friend very abruptly that his father died that
+year on the eighth day before the kalends of December--on the 24th of
+November. Some question as to the date of the old man's death had
+probably been asked. He gives further commissions as to statues, and
+declares of his Tusculan villa that he is happy only when he is there.
+In the third letter he promises that he will be ready to pay one Cincius
+L170 on a certain day, the price probably of more statues, and gives
+orders to his friend as to the buying of books. "All my prospect of
+enjoying myself at my ease depends on your goodness." These were the
+letters he wrote when he had just ceased to be AEdile.
+
+From the next two years five letters remain to us, chiefly noticeable
+from the continued commissions given by Cicero to Atticus for statues.
+Statues and more statues are wanted as ornaments for his Tusculanum.
+Should there be more than are needed for that villa, he will begin to
+decorate another that he has, the Formianum, near Caieta. He wants
+whatever Atticus may think proper for his "palaestra" and "gymnasium."
+Atticus has a library or collection of maps for sale, and Cicero engages
+to buy them, though it seems that he has not at present quite got the
+money. He reserves, he says, all his little comings-in,
+"vindemiolas"--what he might make by selling his grapes as a lady in the
+country might get a little income from her spare butter--in order that
+he may have books as a resource for his old age. Again, he bids Atticus
+not to be afraid but what he, Cicero, will be able to buy them some
+day--which if he can do he will be richer than Crassus, and will envy no
+one his mansions or his lawns. He also declares that he has betrothed
+Tullia, then ten years old, to Caius Piso, son of Lucius Piso Frugi. The
+proposed marriage, which after three years of betrothal was duly
+solemnized, was considered to be in all respects desirable. Cicero
+thought very highly of his son-in-law, who was related to Calpurnius
+Piso, one of the Consuls of that year. So far everything was going well
+with our orator.
+
+[Sidenote: B.C. 67, aetat. 40.]
+
+He was then candidate for the Praetorship, and was elected first, as has
+been already said. It was in that year, too that a law was passed in
+Rome, at the instance of one Gabinius, a tribune, authorizing Pompey to
+exterminate the pirates in the Mediterranean, and giving him almost
+unlimited power for this object. Pompey was not, indeed, named in this
+law. A single general, one who had been Consul, was to be approved by
+the Senate, with exclusive command by sea and for fifty miles on shore.
+He was to select as his own officers a hitherto unheard-of number, all
+of senatorial rank. It was well understood when the law was worded that
+Pompey alone could fill the place. The Senate opposed the scheme with
+all its power, although, seven years before, it had acknowledged the
+necessity of some measure for extirpating the pirates. But jealousies
+prevailed, and the Senate was afraid of Pompey. Gabinius, however,
+carried his law by the votes of the people, and Pompey was appointed.
+
+Nothing tells us more clearly the wretched condition of things in Rome
+at this time than this infliction of pirates, under which their commerce
+was almost destroyed. Sulla had re-established the outside show of a
+strong government--a government which was strong enough to enable rich
+men to live securely in Rome; but he had done nothing to consolidate the
+Empire. Even Lucullus in the East had only partially succeeded, leaving
+Mithridates still to be dealt with by Pompey. Of what nature was the
+government of the provinces under Sulla's aristocracy we learn from the
+trials of Verres, and of Fonteius, and of Catiline. The Mediterranean
+swarmed with pirates, who taught themselves to think that they had
+nothing to fear from the hands of the Romans. Plutarch declares to
+us--no doubt with fair accuracy, because the description has been
+admitted by subsequent writers--how great was the horror of these
+depredations.[141] It is marvellous to us now that this should have been
+allowed--marvellous that pirates should reach such a pitch of importance
+that Verres had found it worth his while to sacrifice Roman citizens in
+their place. Pompey went forth with his officers, his fleets, and his
+money, and cleared the Mediterranean in forty days, as Plutarch says.
+Floras tells us that not a ship was lost by the Romans, and not a pirate
+left on the seas.[142]
+
+In the history of Rome at this time we find men of mark whose
+characters, as we read, become clear to us, or appear to become clear.
+Of Marius and of Sulla we have a defined idea. Caesar, with his
+imperturbable courage, absence of scruples, and assurance of success,
+comes home to us. Cicero, I think, we certainly may understand.
+Catiline, Cato, Antony, and Brutus have left their portraits with us. Of
+Pompey I must acknowledge for myself that I have but a vague conception.
+His wonderful successes seem to have been produced by so very little
+power of his own! He was not determined and venomous as was Marius; not
+cold-blooded and ruthless as was Sulla; certainly not confident as was
+Caesar; not humane as was Cicero; not passionate as Catiline; not stoic
+as was Cato; not reckless as was Antony, nor wedded to the idea of an
+oligarchy as was Brutus. Success came in his way, and he found it--found
+it again and again, till fortune seemed to have adopted him. Success
+lifted him higher and higher, till at last it seemed to him that he must
+be a Sulla whether he would or no.[143] But he could not endure the idea
+of a rival Sulla. I doubt whether ambition would have prompted him to
+fight for the empire of the Republic, had he not perceived that that
+empire would fall into Caesar's hands did he not grasp it himself. It
+would have satisfied him to let things go, while the citizens called him
+"Magnus," and regarded him as the man who could do a great thing if he
+would, if only no rivalship had been forced upon him. Caesar did force it
+on him, and then, as a matter of course, he fell. He must have
+understood warfare from his youth upward, knowing well the purposes of a
+Roman legion and of Roman auxiliaries. He had destroyed Sertorius in
+Spain, a man certainly greater than himself, and had achieved the honor
+of putting an end to the Servile war when Spartacus, the leader of the
+slaves and gladiators, had already been killed. He must have appreciated
+at its utmost the meaning of those words, "Cives Romanus." He was a
+handsome man, with good health, patient of labor, not given to luxury,
+reticent, I should say ungenerous, and with a strong touch of vanity; a
+man able to express but unable to feel friendship; with none of the
+highest attributes of manhood, but with all the second-rate attributes
+at their best; a capable, brave man, but one certain to fall crushed
+beneath the heel of such a man as Caesar, and as certain to leave such a
+one as Cicero in the lurch.
+
+It is necessary that the reader should attempt to realize to himself the
+personal characteristics of Pompey, as from this time forward Cicero's
+political life--and his life now became altogether political--was
+governed by that of Pompey. That this was the case to a great extent is
+certain--to a sad extent, I think. The two men were of the same age; but
+Pompey had become a general among soldiers before Cicero had ceased to
+be a pupil among advocates. As Cicero was making his way toward the
+front, Pompey was already the first among Romans. He had been Consul
+seven years before his proper time, and had lately, as we have seen,
+been invested with extraordinary powers in that matter of putting down
+the pirates. In some sort the mantle of Sulla had fallen upon him. He
+was the leader of what we may call the conservative party. If, which I
+doubt, the political governance of men was a matter of interest to him,
+he would have had them governed by oligarchical forms. Such had been the
+forms in Rome, in which, though the votes of the people were the source
+of all power, the votes hardly went further than the selection of this
+or that oligarch. Pompey no doubt felt the expediency of maintaining the
+old order of things, in the midst of which he had been born to high
+rank, and had achieved the topmost place either by fortune or by merit.
+For any heartfelt conviction as to what might be best for his country or
+his countrymen, in what way he might most surely use his power for the
+good of the citizens generally, we must, I think, look in vain to that
+Pompey whom history has handed down to us. But, of all matters which
+interested Cicero, the governance of men interested him the most. How
+should the great Rome of his day rise to greater power than ever, and
+yet be as poor as in the days of her comparative insignificance? How
+should Rome be ruled so that Romans might be the masters of the world,
+in mental gifts as well as bodily strength, in arts as well as in
+arms--as by valor, so by virtue? He, too, was an oligarch by strongest
+conviction. His mind could conceive nothing better than Consuls,
+Praetors, Censors, Tribunes, and the rest of it; with, however, the
+stipulation that the Consuls and the Praetors should be honest men. The
+condition was no doubt an impossible one; but this he did not or would
+not see. Pompey himself was fairly honest. Up to this time he had shown
+no egregious lust for personal power. His hands were clean in the midst
+of so much public plunder. He was the leader of the conservative party.
+The "Optimates," or "Boni," as Cicero indifferently calls them--meaning,
+as we should say, the upper classes, who were minded to stand by their
+order--believed in him, though they did not just at that time wish to
+confide to him the power which the people gave him. The Senate did not
+want another Sulla; and yet it was Sulla who had reinstated the Senate.
+The Senate would have hindered Pompey, if it could, from his command
+against the pirates, and again from his command against Mithridates. But
+he, nevertheless, was naturally their head, as came to be seen plainly
+when, seventeen years afterward, Caesar passed the Rubicon, and Cicero in
+his heart acknowledged Pompey as his political leader while Pompey
+lived. This, I think, was the case to a sad extent, as Pompey was
+incapable of that patriotic enthusiasm which Cicero demanded. As we go
+on we shall find that the worst episodes in Cicero's political career
+were created by his doubting adherence to a leader whom he bitterly felt
+to be untrue to himself, and in whom his trust became weaker and weaker
+to the end.
+
+Then came Cicero's Praetorship. In the time of Cicero there were eight
+Praetors, two of whom were employed in the city, and the six others in
+the provinces. The "Praetor Urbanus" was confined to the city, and was
+regarded as the first in authority. This was the office filled by
+Cicero. His duty was to preside among the judges, and to name a judge or
+judges for special causes.
+
+[Sidenote: B.C. 66, aetat. 41.]
+
+Cicero at this time, when he and Pompey were forty or forty-one,
+believed thoroughly in Pompey. When the great General was still away,
+winding up the affairs of his maritime war against the pirates, there
+came up the continually pressing question of the continuation of the
+Mithridatic war. Lucullus had been absent on that business nearly seven
+years, and, though he had been at first grandly victorious, had failed
+at last. His own soldiers, tired of their protracted absence, mutinied
+against him, and Glabrio, a later Consul, who had been sent to take the
+command out of his hands, had feared to encounter the difficulty. It was
+essential that something should be done, and one Manilius, a Tribune, a
+man of no repute himself, but whose name has descended to all posterity
+in the oration Pro Lege Manilia, proposed to the people that Pompey
+should have the command. Then Cicero first entered, as we may say, on
+political life. Though he had been Quaestor and AEdile, and was now
+Praetor, he had taken a part only in executive administration. He had had
+his political ideas, and had expressed them very strongly in that matter
+of the judges, which, in the condition of Rome, was certainly a
+political question of great moment. But this he had done as an advocate,
+and had interfered only as a barrister of to-day might do, who, in
+arguing a case before the judges, should make an attack on some alleged
+misuse of patronage. Now, for the first time, he made a political
+harangue, addressing the people in a public meeting from the rostra.
+This speech is the oration Pro Lego Manilia. This he explains in his
+first words. Hitherto his addresses had been to the judges--Judices; now
+it is to the people--Quirites: "Although, Quirites, no sight has ever
+been so pleasant to me as that of seeing you gathered in
+crowds--although this spot has always seemed to me the fittest in the
+world for action and the noblest for speech--nevertheless, not my own
+will, indeed, but the duties of the profession which I have followed
+from my earliest years have hitherto hindered me from entering upon this
+the best path to glory which is open to any good man." It is only
+necessary for our purpose to say, in reference to the matter in
+question, that this command was given to Pompey in opposition to the
+Senate.
+
+As to the speech itself, it requires our attention on two points. It is
+one of those choice morsels of polished Latinity which have given to
+Cicero the highest rank among literary men, and have, perhaps, made him
+the greatest writer of prose which the world has produced. I have
+sometimes attempted to make a short list of his _chefs d'[oe]uvre_--of
+his tidbits, as I must say, if I am bound to express myself in English.
+The list would never allow itself to be short, and so has become almost
+impossible; but, whenever the attempt has been made, this short oration
+in its integrity has always been included in it. My space hardly permits
+me to insert specimens of the author's style, but I will give in an
+appendix[144] two brief extracts as specimens of the beauty of words in
+Latin. I almost fancy that if properly read they would have a grace
+about them even to the ears of those to whom Latin is unknown. I venture
+to attach to them in parallel columns my own translation, acknowledging
+in despair how impossible I have found it to catch anything of the
+rhythm of the author. As to the beauty of the language I shall probably
+find no opponent. But a serious attack has been made on Cicero's
+character, because it has been supposed that his excessive praise was
+lavished on Pompey with a view of securing the great General's
+assistance in his candidature for the Consulship. Even Middleton repeats
+this accusation, and only faintly repels it. M. Du Rozoir, the French
+critic, declares that "in the whole oration there is not a word which
+was not dictated to Cicero the Praetor by his desire to become Consul,
+and that his own elevation was in his thoughts all through, and not that
+of Pompey." The matter would be one to us but of little moment, were it
+not that Cicero's character for honesty as a politician depends on the
+truth or falsehood of his belief in Pompey. Pompey had been almost
+miraculously fortunate up to this period of his life's career. He had
+done infinitely valuable service to the State. He had already crushed
+the pirates. There was good ground for believing that in his hands the
+Roman arms would be more efficacious against Mithridates than in those
+of any other General. All that Cicero says on this head, whatever might
+have been his motive for saying it, was at any rate true.
+
+A man desirous of rising in the service of his country of course adheres
+to his party. That Cicero was wrong in supposing that the Republic,
+which had in fact already fallen, could be re-established by the
+strength of any one man, could be bolstered up by any leader, has to be
+admitted; that in trusting to Pompey as a politician he leaned on a
+frail reed I admit; but I will not admit that in praising the man he was
+hypocritical or unduly self-seeking. In our own political contests, when
+a subordinate member of the Cabinet is zealously serviceable to his
+chief, we do not accuse him of falsehood because by that zeal he has
+also strengthened his own hands. How shall a patriot do the work of his
+country unless he be in high place? and how shall he achieve that place
+except by co-operation with those whom he trusts? They who have blamed
+Cicero for speaking on behalf of Pompey on this occasion, seem to me to
+ignore not only the necessities but the very virtues of political life.
+
+One other remarkable oration Cicero made during his Praetorship--that,
+namely, in defence of Aulus Cluentius Habitus. As it is the longest, so
+is it the most intricate, and on account of various legal points the
+most difficult to follow of all his speeches. But there are none perhaps
+which tell us more of the condition, or perhaps I should say the
+possibilities, of life among the Romans of that day. The accusation
+against Roscius Amerinus was accompanied by horrible circumstances. The
+iniquities of Verres, as a public officer who had the power of blessing
+or of cursing a whole people, were very terrible; but they do not shock
+so much as the story here told of private life. That any man should have
+lived as did Oppianicus, or any woman as did Sassia, seems to prove a
+state of things worse than anything described by Juvenal a hundred and
+fifty years later. Cicero was no doubt unscrupulous as an advocate, but
+he could have gained nothing here by departing from verisimilitude. We
+must take the picture as given us as true, and acknowledge that, though
+law processes were common, crimes such as those of this man and of this
+woman were not only possible, but might be perpetrated with impunity.
+The story is too long and complicated to be even abridged; but it should
+be read by those who wish to know the condition of life in Italy during
+the latter days of the Republic.
+
+[Sidenote: B.C. 65, aetat. 42.]
+
+In the year after he was Praetor--in the first of the two years between
+his Praetorship and Consulship, B.C. 65--he made a speech in defence of
+one Caius Cornelius, as to which we hear that the pleadings in the case
+occupied four days. This, with our interminable "causes celebres," does
+not seem much to us, but Cicero's own speech was so long that in
+publishing it he divided it into two parts. This Cornelius had been
+Tribune in the year but one before, and was accused of having misused
+his power when in office. He had incurred the enmity of the aristocracy
+by attempts made on the popular side to restrain the Senate; especially
+by the stringency of a law proposed for stopping bribery at elections.
+Cicero's speeches are not extant. We have only some hardly intelligible
+fragments of them, which were preserved by Asconius,[145] a commentator
+on certain of Cicero's orations; but there is ground for supposing that
+these Cornelian orations were at the time matter of as great moment as
+those spoken against Verres, or almost as those spoken against Catiline.
+Cicero defended Cornelius, who was attacked by the Senate--by the rich
+men who desired office and the government of provinces. The law proposed
+for the restriction of bribery at elections no doubt attempted to do
+more by the severity of its punishment than can be achieved by such
+means: it was mitigated, but was still admitted by Cicero to be too
+rigorous. The rancor of the Senate against Cornelius seems to have been
+due to this attempt; but the illegality with which he was charged, and
+for which he was tried, had reference to another law suggested by
+him--for restoring to the people the right of pardon which had been
+usurped by the Senate. Caius Cornelius seems to have been a man honest
+and eager in his purpose to save the Republic from the greed of the
+oligarchs, but--as had been the Gracchi--ready in his eagerness to push
+his own authority too far in his attempt to restrain that of the Senate.
+A second Tribune, in the interest of the Senate, attempted to exercise
+an authority which undoubtedly belonged to him, by inhibiting the
+publication or reading of the proposed law. The person whose duty it was
+to read it was stopped; then Cornelius pushed aside the inferior
+officer, and read it himself. There was much violence, and the men who
+brought the accusation about Cornelius--two brothers named Cominii--had
+to hide themselves, and saved their lives by escaping over the roofs of
+the houses.
+
+This took place when Cicero was standing for the Praetorship, and the
+confusion consequent upon it was so great that it was for awhile
+impossible to carry on the election. In the year after his Praetorship
+Cornelius was put upon his trial, and the two speeches were made.
+
+The matter seems to have been one of vital interest in Rome. The contest
+on the part of the Senate was for all that made public life dear to such
+a body. Not to bribe--not to be able to lay out money in order that
+money might be returned ten-fold, a hundred-fold--would be to them to
+cease to be aristocrats. The struggles made by the Gracchi, by Livius
+Drusus, by others whose names would only encumber us here, by this
+Cornelius, were the expiring efforts of those who really desired an
+honest Republic. Such were the struggles made by Cicero himself; though
+there was present always to him an idea, with which, in truth, neither
+the demagogues nor the aristocrats sympathized, that the reform could be
+effected, not by depriving the Senate of its power, but by teaching the
+Senate to use it honestly. We can sympathize with the idea, but we are
+driven to acknowledge that it was futile.
+
+Though we know that this was so, the fragments of the speeches, though
+they have been made intelligible to us by the "argument" or story of
+them prefixed by Asconius in his notes, cannot be of interest to
+readers. They were extant in the time of Quintilian, who speaks of them
+with the highest praise.[146] Cicero himself selects certain passages
+out of these speeches as examples of eloquence or rhythm,[147] thus
+showing the labor with which he composed them, polishing them by the
+exercise of his ear as well as by that of his intellect. We know from
+Asconius that this trial was regarded at the time as one of vital
+interest.
+
+We have two letters from Cicero written in the year after his
+Praetorship, both to Atticus, the first of which tells us of his probable
+competition for the Consulship; the second informs his friend that a son
+is born to him--he being then forty-two years old--and that he is
+thinking to undertake the defence of Catiline, who was to be accused of
+peculation as Propraetor in Africa. "Should he be acquitted," says
+Cicero, "I should hope to have him on my side in the matter of my
+canvass. If he should be convicted, I shall be able to bear that too."
+There were to be six or seven candidates, of whom two, of course, would
+be chosen. It would be much to Cicero "to run," as our phrase goes, with
+the one who among his competitors would be the most likely to succeed.
+Catiline, in spite of his then notorious character--in the teeth of the
+evils of his government in Africa--was, from his birth, his connections,
+and from his ability, supposed to have the best chance. It was open to
+Cicero to defend Catiline as he had defended Fonteius, and we know from
+his own words that he thought of doing so. But he did not; nor did
+Cicero join himself with Catiline in the canvassing. It is probable that
+the nature of Catiline's character and intentions were now becoming
+clearer from day to day. Catiline was tried and acquitted, having, it is
+said, bribed the judges.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+_CICERO AS CONSUL._
+
+
+Hitherto everything had succeeded with Cicero. His fortune and his fame
+had gone hand-in-hand. The good-will of the citizens had been accorded
+to him on all possible occasions. He had risen surely, if not quickly,
+to the top of his profession, and had so placed himself there as to have
+torn the wreath from the brow of his predecessor and rival, Hortensius.
+On no memorable occasion had he been beaten. If now and then he had
+failed to win a cause in which he was interested, it was as to some
+matter in which, as he had said to Atticus in speaking of his
+contemplated defence of Catiline, he was not called on to break his
+heart if he were beaten. We may imagine that his life had been as happy
+up to this point as a man's life may be. He had married well. Children
+had been born to him, who were the source of infinite delight. He had
+provided himself with houses, marbles, books, and all the intellectual
+luxuries which well-used wealth could produce. Friends were thick around
+him. His industry, his ability, and his honesty were acknowledged. The
+citizens had given him all that it was in their power to give. Now at
+the earliest possible day, with circumstances of much more than usual
+honor, he was put in the highest place which his country had to offer,
+and knew himself to be the one man in whom his country at this moment
+trusted. Then came the one twelve-month, the apex of his fortunes; and
+after that, for the twenty years that followed, there fell upon him one
+misery after another--one trouble on the head of another trouble--so
+cruelly that the reader, knowing the manner of the Romans, almost
+wonders that he condescended to live.
+
+[Sidenote: B.C. 64, aetat. 43.]
+
+He was chosen Consul, we are told, not by the votes but by the unanimous
+acclamation of the citizens. What was the exact manner of doing this we
+can hardly now understand. The Consuls were elected by ballot, wooden
+tickets having been distributed to the people for the purpose; but
+Cicero tells us that no voting tickets were used in his case, but that
+he was elected by the combined voice of the whole people.[148]
+
+He had stood with six competitors. Of these it is only necessary to
+mention two, as by them only was Cicero's life affected, and as out of
+the six, only they seem to have come prominently forward during the
+canvassing. These were Catiline the conspirator, as we shall have to
+call him in dealing with his name in the next chapter, and Caius
+Antonius, one of the sons of Marc Antony, the great orator of the
+preceding age, and uncle of the Marc Antony with whom we are all so well
+acquainted, and with whom we shall have so much to do before we get to
+the end of this work. Cicero was so easily the first that it may be said
+of him that he walked over the course. Whether this was achieved by the
+Machiavellian arts which his brother Quintus taught in his treatise De
+Petitione Consulatus, or was attributable to his general popularity, may
+be a matter of doubt. As far as we can judge from the signs which remain
+to us of the public feeling of the period, it seems that he was at this
+time regarded with singular affection by his countrymen. He had robbed
+none, and had been cruel to no one. He had already abandoned the profit
+of provincial government--to which he was by custom entitled after the
+lapse of his year's duty as Praetor--in order that he might remain in
+Rome among the people. Though one of the Senate himself--and full of the
+glory of the Senate, as he had declared plainly enough in that passage
+from one of the Verrine orations which I have quoted--he had generally
+pleaded on the popular side. Such was his cleverness, that even when on
+the unpopular side--as he may be supposed to have been when defending
+Fonteius--he had given a popular aspect to the cause in hand. We cannot
+doubt, judging from the loud expression of the people's joy at his
+election, that he had made himself beloved But, nevertheless, he omitted
+none of those cares which it was expected that a candidate should take.
+He made his electioneering speech "in toga candida"--in a white robe, as
+candidates did, and were thence so called. It has not come down to us,
+nor do we regret it, judging from the extracts which have been collected
+from the notes which Asconius wrote upon it. It was full of personal
+abuse of Antony and Catiline, his competitors. Such was the practice of
+Rome at this time, as it was also with us not very long since. We shall
+have more than enough of such eloquence before we have done our task.
+When we come to the language in which Cicero spoke of Clodius, his
+enemy, of Piso and Gabinius, the Consuls who allowed him to be banished,
+and of Marc Antony, his last great opponent--the nephew of the man who
+was now his colleague--we shall have very much of it. It must again be
+pleaded that the foul abuse which fell from other lips has not been
+preserved and that Cicero, therefore, must not be supposed to have been
+more foul mouthed than his rivals. We can easily imagine that he was
+more bitter than others, because he had more power to throw into his
+words the meaning which he intended them to convey.
+
+Antony was chosen as Cicero's colleague. It seems, from such evidence as
+we are able to get on the subject, that Cicero trusted Antony no better
+than he did Catiline, but, appreciating the wisdom of the maxim, "divide
+et impera"--separate your enemies and you will get the better of them,
+which was no doubt known as well then as now--he soon determined to use
+Antony as his ally against Catiline, who was presumed to reckon Antony
+among his fellow-conspirators. Sallust puts into the mouth of Catiline a
+declaration to this effect,[149] and Cicero did use Antony for the
+purpose. The story of Catiline's conspiracy is so essentially the story
+of Cicero's Consulship, that I may be justified in hurrying over the
+other events of his year's rule; but still there is something that must
+be told. Though Catiline's conduct was under his eye during the whole
+year, it was not till October that the affairs in which we shall have to
+interest ourselves commenced.
+
+Of what may have been the nature of the administrative work done by the
+great Roman officers of State we know very little; perhaps I might
+better say that we know nothing. Men, in their own diaries, when they
+keep them, or even in their private letters, are seldom apt to say much
+of those daily doings which are matter of routine to themselves, and are
+by them supposed to be as little interesting to others. A Prime-minister
+with us, were he as prone to reveal himself in correspondence as was
+Cicero with his friend Atticus, would hardly say when he went to the
+Treasury Chambers or what he did when he got there. We may imagine that
+to a Cabinet Minister even a Cabinet Council would, after many sittings,
+become a matter of course. A leading barrister would hardly leave behind
+him a record of his work in chambers. It has thus come to pass that,
+though we can picture to ourselves a Cicero before the judges, or
+addressing the people from the rostra, or uttering his opinion in the
+Senate, we know nothing of him as he sat in his office and did his
+consular work. We cannot but suppose that there must have been an office
+with many clerks. There must have been heavy daily work. The whole
+operation of government was under the Consul's charge, and to Cicero,
+with a Catiline on his hands, this must have been more than usually
+heavy. How he did it, with what assistance, sitting at what
+writing-table, dressed in what robes, with what surroundings of archives
+and red tape, I cannot make manifest to myself. I can imagine that there
+must have been much of dignity, as there was with all leading Romans,
+but beyond that I cannot advance even in fancying what was the official
+life of a Consul.
+
+In the old days the Consul used, as a matter of course, to go out and do
+the fighting. When there was an enemy here, or an enemy there, the
+Consul was bound to hurry off with his army, north or south, to
+different parts of Italy. But gradually this system became
+impracticable. Distances became too great, as the Empire extended itself
+beyond the bounds of Italy, to admit of the absence of the Consuls. Wars
+prolonged themselves through many campaigns, as notably did that which
+was soon to take place in Gaul under Caesar. The Consuls remained at
+home, and Generals were sent out with proconsular authority. This had
+become so certainly the case, that Cicero on becoming Consul had no fear
+of being called on to fight the enemies of his country. There was much
+fighting then in course of being done by Pompey in the East; but this
+would give but little trouble to the great officers at home, unless it
+might be in sending out necessary supplies.
+
+The Consul's work, however, was severe enough. We find from his own
+words, in a letter to Atticus written in the year but one after his
+Consulship, 61 B.C., that as Consul he made twelve public addresses.
+Each of them must have been a work of labor, requiring a full mastery
+over the subject in hand, and an arrangement of words very different in
+their polished perfection from the generality of parliamentary speeches
+to which we are accustomed. The getting up of his cases must have taken
+great time. Letters went slowly and at a heavy cost. Writing must have
+been tedious when that most common was done with a metal point on soft
+wax. An advocate who was earnest in a case had to do much for himself.
+We have heard how Cicero made his way over to Sicily, creeping in a
+little boat through the dangers prepared for him, in order that he might
+get up the evidence against Verres. In defending Aulus Cluentius when he
+was Praetor, Cicero must have found the work to have been immense. In
+preparing the attack upon Catiline it seems that every witness was
+brought to himself. There were four Catiline speeches made in the year
+of his Consulship, but in the same year many others were delivered by
+him. He mentions, as we shall see just now, twelve various speeches made
+in the year of his Consulship.
+
+I imagine that the words spoken can in no case have been identical with
+those which have come to us--which were, as we may say, prepared for the
+press by Tiro, his slave and secretary. We have evidence as to some of
+them, especially as to the second Catiline oration, that time did not
+admit of its being written and learned by heart after the occurrence of
+the circumstances to which it alludes. It needs must have been
+extemporary, with such mental preparation as one night may have sufficed
+to give him. How the words may have been taken down in such a case we do
+not quite know; but we are aware that short-hand writers were employed,
+though there can hardly have been a science of stenography perfected as
+is that with us.[150] The words which we read were probably much
+polished before they were published, but how far this was done we do not
+know. What we do know is that the words which he spoke moved, convinced,
+and charmed those who heard them, as do the words we read move, convince
+and charm us. Of these twelve consular speeches Cicero gives a special
+account to his friend. "I will send you," he says, "the speechlings[151]
+which you require, as well as some others, seeing that those which I
+have written out at the request of a few young men please you also. It
+was an advantage to me here to follow the example of that fellow-citizen
+of yours in those orations which he called his Philippics. In these he
+brightened himself up, and discarded his 'nisi prius' way of speaking,
+so that he might achieve something more dignified, something more
+statesman-like. So I have done with these speeches of mine which may be
+called 'consulares,'" as having been made not only in his consular year
+but also with something of consular dignity. "Of these, one, on the new
+land laws proposed, was spoken in the Senate on the kalends of January.
+The second, on the same subject, to the people. The third was respecting
+Otho's law.[152] The fourth was in defence of Rabirius.[153] The fifth
+was in reference to the children of those who had lost their property
+and their rank under Sulla's proscription.[154] The sixth was an address
+to the people, and explained why I renounced my provincial
+government.[155] The seventh drove Catiline out of the city. The eighth
+was addressed to the people the day after Catiline fled. The ninth was
+again spoken to the people, on the day on which the Allobroges gave
+their evidence. Then, again, the tenth was addressed to the Senate on
+the fifth of December"--also respecting Catiline. "There are also two
+short supplementary speeches on the Agrarian war. You shall have the
+whole body of them. As what I write and what I do are equally
+interesting to you, you will gather from the same documents all my
+doings and all my sayings."
+
+It is not to be supposed that in this list are contained all the
+speeches which he made in his consular year, but those only which he
+made as Consul--those to which he was desirous of adding something of
+the dignity of statesmanship, something beyond the weight attached to
+his pleadings as a lawyer. As an advocate, Consul though he was, he
+continued to perform his work; from whence we learn that no State
+dignity was so high as to exempt an established pleader from the duty of
+defending his friends. Hortensius, when Consul elect, had undertaken to
+defend Verres. Cicero defended Murena when he was Consul. He defended C.
+Calpurnius Piso also, who was accused, as were so many, of proconsular
+extortion; but whether in this year or in the preceding is not, I think,
+known.[156] Of his speech on that occasion we have nothing remaining. Of
+his pleading for Murena we have, if not the whole, the material part,
+and, though nobody cares very much for Murena now, the oration is very
+amusing. It was made toward the end of the year, on the 20th of
+November, after the second Catiline oration, and before the third, at
+the very moment in which Cicero was fully occupied with the evidence on
+which he intended to convict Catiline's fellow-conspirators. As I read
+it I am carried away by wonder, rather than admiration, at the energy of
+the man who could at such a period of his life give up his time to
+master the details necessary for the trial of Murena.
+
+Early in the year Cicero had caused a law to be passed--which, after
+him, was called the Lex Tullia--increasing the stringency of the
+enactments against bribery on the part of consular candidates. His
+intention had probably been to hinder Catiline, who was again about to
+become a candidate. But Murena, who was elected, was supposed to have
+been caught in the meshes of the net, and also Silanus, the other Consul
+designate. Cato, the man of stern nature, the great Stoic of the day,
+was delighted to have an opportunity of proceeding against some one, and
+not very sorry to attack Murena with weapons provided from the armory of
+Murena's friend, Cicero. Silanus, however, who happened to be cousin to
+Cato, was allowed to pass unmolested. Sulpicius, who was one of the
+disappointed candidates, Cato, and Postumius were the accusers.
+Hortensius, Crassus, and Cicero were combined together for the defence
+of Murena. But as we read the single pleading that has come to us, we
+feel that, unlike those Roman trials generally, this was carried on
+without any acrimony on either side. I think it must have been that Cato
+wished to have an opportunity of displaying his virtue, but it had been
+arranged that Murena was to be acquitted. Murena was accused, among
+other things, of dancing! Greeks might dance, as we hear from Cornelius
+Nepos,[157] but for a Roman Consul it would be disgraceful in the
+highest extreme. A lady, indeed, might dance, but not much. Sallust
+tells us of Sempronia--who was, indeed, a very bad female if all that he
+says of her be true--that she danced more elegantly than became an
+honest woman.[158] She was the wife of a Consul. But a male Roman of
+high standing might not dance at all. Cicero defends his friend by
+showing how impossible it was--how monstrous the idea. "No man would
+dance unless drunk or mad." Nevertheless, I imagine that Murena had
+danced.
+
+Cicero seizes an opportunity of quizzing Cato for his stoicism, and uses
+it delightfully. Horace was not more happy when, in defence of
+Aristippus, he declared that any philosopher would turn up his nose at
+cabbage if he could get himself asked to the tables of rich men.[159]
+"There was one Zeno," Cicero says, "who laid down laws. No wise man
+would forgive any fault. No man worthy of the name of man would allow
+himself to be pitiful. Wise men are beautiful, even though deformed;
+rich though penniless; kings though they be slaves. We who are not wise
+are mere exiles, runagates, enemies of our country, and madmen. Any
+fault is an unpardonable crime. To kill an old cock, if you do not want
+it, is as bad as to murder your father!"[160] And these doctrines, he
+goes on to say, which are used by most of us merely as something to talk
+about, this man Cato absolutely believes, and tries to live by them. I
+shall have to refer back to this when I speak of Cicero's philosophy
+more at length; but his common-sense crops up continually in the
+expressions which he uses for defending the ordinary conditions of a
+man's life, in opposition to that impossible superiority to mundane
+things which the philosophers professed to teach their pupils. He turns
+to Cato and asks him questions, which he answers himself with his own
+philosophy: "Would you pardon nothing? Well, yes; but not all things.
+Would you do nothing for friendship? Sometimes, unless duty should stand
+in the way. Would you never be moved to pity? I would maintain my habit
+of sincerity, but something must no doubt be allowed to humanity. It is
+good to stick to your opinion, but only until some better opinion shall
+have prevailed with you." In all this the humanity of our Cicero, as
+opposed equally to the impossible virtue of a Cato or the abominable
+vice of a Verres, is in advance of his age, and reminds us of what
+Christ has taught us.
+
+But the best morsel in the whole oration is that in which he snubs the
+lawyers. It must be understood that Cicero did not pride himself on
+being a lawyer. He was an advocate, and if he wanted law there were
+those of an inferior grade to whom he could go to get it. In truth, he
+did understand the law, being a man of deep research, who inquired into
+everything. As legal points had been raised, he thus addresses
+Sulpicius, who seems to have affected a knowledge of jurisprudence, who
+had been a candidate for the Consulship, and who was his own intimate
+friend: "I must put you out of your conceit," he says; "it was your
+other gifts, not a knowledge of the laws--your moderation, your wisdom,
+your justice--which, in my opinion, made you worthy of being loved. I
+will not say you threw away your time in studying law, but it was not
+thus you made yourself worthy of the Consulship.[161] That power of
+eloquence, majestic and full of dignity which has so often availed in
+raising a man to the Consulship, is able by its words to move the minds
+of the Senate and the people and the judges.[162] But in such a poor
+science as that of law what honor can there be? Its details are taken up
+with mere words and fragments of words.[163] They forget all equity in
+points of law, and stick to the mere letter."[164] He goes through a
+presumed scene of chicanery, which, Consul as he was, he must have acted
+before the judges and the people, no doubt to the extreme delight of
+them all. At last he says, "Full as I am of business, if you raise my
+wrath I will make myself a lawyer, and learn it all in three days."[165]
+From these and many other passages in Cicero's writings and speeches,
+and also from Quintilian, we learn that a Roman advocate was by no
+means the same as an English barrister. The science which he was
+supposed to have learned was simply that of telling his story in
+effective language. It no doubt came to pass that he had much to do in
+getting up the details of his story--what we may call the evidence--but
+he looked elsewhere, to men of another profession, for his law. The
+"juris consultus" or the "juris peritus" was the lawyer, and as such was
+regarded as being of much less importance than the "patronus" or
+advocate, who stood before the whole city and pleaded the cause. In this
+trial of Murena, who was by trade a soldier, it suited Cicero to
+belittle lawyers and to extol the army. When he is telling Sulpicius
+that it was not by being a lawyer that a man could become Consul, he
+goes on to praise the high dignity of his client's profession. "The
+greatest glory is achieved by those who excel in battle. All our empire,
+all our republic, is defended and made strong by them."[166] It was thus
+that the advocate could speak! This comes from the man who always took
+glory to himself in declaring that the "toga" was superior to helmet and
+shield. He had already declared that they erred who thought that they
+were going to get his own private opinion in speeches made in law
+courts.[167] He knew how to defend his friend Murena, who was a soldier,
+and in doing so could say very sharp things, though yet in joke, against
+his friend Sulpicius, the lawyer. But in truth few men understood the
+Roman law better than did Cicero.
+
+But we must go back to that agrarian law respecting which, as he tells
+us, four of his consular speeches were made. This had been brought
+forward by Rullus, one of the Tribunes, toward the end of the last year.
+The Tribunes came into office in December, whereas at this period of the
+Republic the Consuls were in power only on and from January 1st. Cicero,
+who had been unable to get the particulars of the new law till it had
+been proclaimed, had but a few days to master its details. It was, to
+his thinking, altogether revolutionary. We have the words of many of the
+clauses; and though it is difficult at this distance of time to realize
+what would have been its effect, I think we are entitled to say that it
+was intended to subvert all property. Property, speaking of it
+generally, cannot be destroyed The land remains, and the combined
+results of man's industry are too numerous, too large, and too lasting
+to become a wholesale prey to man's anger or madness. Even the elements
+when out of order can do but little toward perfecting destruction. A
+deluge is wanted--or that crash of doom which, whether it is to come or
+not, is believed by the world to be very distant. But it is within human
+power to destroy possession, and redistribute the goods which industry,
+avarice, or perhaps injustice has congregated. They who own property are
+in these days so much stronger than those who have none, that an idea of
+any such redistribution does not create much alarm among the possessors.
+The spirit of communism does not prevail among people who have learned
+that it is, in truth, easier to earn than to steal. But with the Romans
+political economy had naturally not advanced so far as with us. A
+subversion of property had to a great extent taken place no later than
+in Sulla's time. How this had been effected the story of the property of
+Roscius Amerinus has explained to us. Under Sulla's enactments no man
+with a house, with hoarded money, with a family of slaves, with rich
+ornaments, was safe. Property had been made to change hands recklessly,
+ruthlessly, violently, by the illegal application of a law promulgated
+by a single individual, who, however, had himself been instigated by no
+other idea than that of re-establishing the political order of things
+which he approved. Rullus, probably with other motives, was desirous of
+effecting a subversion which, though equally great, should be made
+altogether in a different direction. The ostensible purpose was
+something as follows: as the Roman people had by their valor and wisdom
+achieved for Rome great victories, and therefore great wealth, they, as
+Roman citizens, were entitled to the enjoyment of what they had won;
+whereas, in fact, the sweets of victory fell to the lot only of a few
+aristocrats. For the reform of this evil it should be enacted that all
+public property which had been thus acquired, whether land or chattels,
+should be sold, and with the proceeds other lands should be bought fit
+for the use of Roman citizens, and be given to those who would choose to
+have it. It was specially suggested that the rich country called the
+Campania--that in which Naples now stands with its adjacent
+isles--should be bought up and given over to a great Roman colony. For
+the purpose of carrying out this law ten magistrates should be
+appointed, with plenipotentiary power both as to buying and selling.
+There were many underplots in this. No one need sell unless he chose to
+sell; but at this moment much land was held by no other title than that
+of Sulla's proscriptions. The present possessors were in daily fear of
+dispossession, by some new law made with the object of restoring their
+property to those who had been so cruelly robbed. These would be very
+glad to get any price in hand for land of which their tenure was so
+doubtful; and these were the men whom the "decemviri," or ten
+magistrates, would be anxious to assist. We are told that the
+father-in-law of Rullus himself had made a large acquisition by his use
+of Sulla's proscriptions. And then there would be the instantaneous
+selling of the vast districts obtained by conquest and now held by the
+Roman State. When so much land would be thrown into the market it would
+be sold very cheap and would be sold to those whom the "decemviri" might
+choose to favor. We can hardly now hope to unravel all the intended
+details, but we may be sure that the basis on which property stood would
+have been altogether changed by the measure. The "decemviri" were to
+have plenary power for ten years. All the taxes in all the provinces
+were to be sold, or put up to market. Everything supposed to belong to
+the Roman State was to be sold in every province, for the sake of
+collecting together a huge sum of money, which was to be divided in the
+shape of land among the poorer Romans. Whatever may have been the
+private intentions of Rullus, whether good or bad, it is evident, even
+at this distance of time, that a redistribution of property was intended
+which can only be described as a general subversion. To this the new
+Consul opposed himself vehemently, successfully, and, we must needs say,
+patriotically.
+
+The intense interest which Cicero threw into his work is as manifest in
+these agrarian orations as in those subsequently made as to the Catiline
+conspiracy. He ascends in his energy to a dignity of self-praise which
+induces the reader to feel that a man who could so speak of himself
+without fear of contradiction had a right to assert the supremacy of his
+own character and intellect. He condescends, on the other hand, to a
+virulence of personal abuse against Rullus which, though it is to our
+taste offensive, is, even to us, persuasive, making us feel that such a
+man should not have undertaken such a work. He is describing the way in
+which the bill was first introduced: "Our Tribunes at last enter upon
+their office. The harangue to be made by Rullus is especially expected.
+He is the projector of the law, and it was expected that he would carry
+himself with an air of special audacity. When he was only Tribune elect
+he began to put on a different countenance, to speak with a different
+voice, to walk with a different step. We all saw how he appeared with
+soiled raiment, with his person uncared for, and foul with dirt, with
+his hair and beard uncombed and untrimmed."[168] In Rome men under
+afflictions, particularly if under accusation, showed themselves in
+soiled garments so as to attract pity, and the meaning here is that
+Rullus went about as though under grief at the condition of his poor
+fellow-citizens, who were distressed by the want of this agrarian law.
+No description could be more likely to turn an individual into ridicule
+than this of his taking upon himself to represent in his own person the
+sorrows of the city. The picture of the man with the self-assumed
+garments of public woe, as though he were big enough to exhibit the
+grief of all Rome, could not but be effective. It has been supposed that
+Cicero was insulting the Tribune because he was dirty. Not so. He was
+ridiculing Rullus because Rullus had dared to go about in
+mourning--"sordidatus"--on behalf of his country.
+
+But the tone in which Cicero speaks of himself is magnificent. It is so
+grand as to make us feel that a Consul of Rome, who had the cares of
+Rome on his shoulders, was entitled to declare his own greatness to the
+Senate and to the people. There are the two important orations--that
+spoken first in the Senate, and then the speech to the people from which
+I have already quoted the passage personal to Rullus. In both of them he
+declares his own idea of a Consul, and of himself as Consul. He has been
+speaking of the effect of the proposed law on the revenues of the State,
+and then proceeds: "But I pass by what I have to say on that matter and
+reserve it for the people. I speak now of the danger which menaces our
+safety and our liberty. For what will there be left to us untouched in
+the Republic, what will remain of your authority and freedom, when
+Rullus, and those whom you fear much more than Rullus,[169] with this
+band of ready knaves, with all the rascaldom of Rome, laden with gold
+and silver, shall have seized on Capua and all the cities round? To all
+this, Senators"--Patres conscripti he calls them--"I will oppose what
+power I have. As long as I am Consul I will not suffer them to carry out
+their designs against the Republic.
+
+"But you, Rullus, and those who are with you, have been mistaken
+grievously in supposing that you will be regarded as friends of the
+people in your attempts to subvert the Republic in opposition to a
+Consul who is known in very truth to be the people's friend I call upon
+you, I invite you to meet me in the assembly. Let us have the people of
+Rome as a judge between us. Let us look round and see what it is that
+the people really desire. We shall find that there is nothing so dear to
+them as peace and quietness and ease. You have handed over the city to
+me full of anxiety, depressed with fear, disturbed by these projected
+laws and seditious assemblies." (It must be remembered that he had only
+on that very day begun his Consulship) "The wicked you have filled with
+hope, the good with fear. You have robbed the Forum of loyalty and the
+Republic of dignity. But now, when in the midst of these troubles of
+mind and body, when in this great darkness the voice and the authority
+of the Consul has been heard by the people--when he shall have made it
+plain that there is no cause for fear, that no strange army shall enroll
+itself, no bands collect themselves; that there shall be no new
+colonies, no sale of the revenue, no altered empire, no royal
+'decemvirs,' no second Rome, no other centre of rule but this; that while
+I am Consul there shall be perfect peace, perfect ease--do you suppose
+that I shall dread the superior popularity of your new agrarian law?
+Shall I, do you think, be afraid to hold my own against you in an
+assembly of the citizens when I shall have exposed the iniquity of your
+designs, the fraud of this law, the plots which your Tribunes of the
+people, popular as they think themselves, have contrived against the
+Roman people? Shall I fear--I who have determined to be Consul after
+that fashion in which alone a man may do so in dignity and freedom,
+reaching to ask nothing for myself which any Tribune could object to
+have given to me?"[170]
+
+This was to the Senate, but he is bolder still when he addresses the
+people. He begins by reminding them that it has always been the custom
+of the great officers of state, who have enjoyed the right of having in
+their houses the busts and images of their ancestors, in their first
+speech to the people to join with thanks for the favors done to
+themselves some records of the noble deeds done by their forefathers.
+[171] He, however, could do nothing of the kind: he had no such right:
+none in his family had achieved such dignity. To speak of himself might
+seem too proud, but to be silent would be ungrateful. Therefore would he
+restrain himself, but would still say something, so that he might
+acknowledge what he had received. Then he would leave it for them to
+judge whether he had deserved what they had done for him.
+
+"It is long ago--almost beyond the memory of us now here--since you last
+made a new man Consul.[172] That high office the nobles had reserved for
+themselves, and defended it, as it were, with ramparts. You have secured
+it for me, so that in future it shall be open to any who may be worthy
+of it. Nor have you only made me a Consul, much as that is, but you have
+done so in such a fashion that but few among the old nobles have been so
+treated, and no new man--'novus ante me nemo.' I have, if you will think
+of it, been the only new man who has stood for the Consulship in the
+first year in which it was legal, and who has got it." Then he goes on
+to remind them, in words which I have quoted before, that they had
+elected him by their unanimous voices. All this, he says, had been very
+grateful to him, but he had quite understood that it had been done that
+he might labor on their behalf. That such labor was severe, he declares.
+The Consulship itself must be defended. His period of Consulship to any
+Consul must be a year of grave responsibility, but more so to him than
+to any other. To him, should he be in doubt, the great nobles would give
+no kind advice. To him, should he be overtasked, they would give no
+assistance. But the first thing he would look for should be their good
+opinion. To declare now, before the people, that he would exercise his
+office for the good of the people was his natural duty. But in that
+place, in which it was difficult to speak after such a fashion, in the
+Senate itself, on the very first day of his Consulship, he had declared
+the same thing--"popularem me futurum esse consulem."[173]
+
+The course he had to pursue was noble, but very difficult. He desired,
+certainly, to be recognized as a friend of the people, but he desired so
+to befriend them that he might support also at the same time the power
+of the aristocracy. He still believed, as we cannot believe now, that
+there was a residuum of good in the Senate sufficient to blossom forth
+into new powers of honest government. When speaking to the oligarchs in
+the Senate of Rullus and his land law, it was easy enough to carry them
+with him. That a Consul should oppose a Tribune who was coming forward
+with a "Lex agraria" in his hands, as the latest disciple of the
+Gracchi, was not out of the common order of things. Another Consul would
+either have looked for popularity and increased power of plundering, as
+Antony might have done, or have stuck to his order, as he would have
+called it--as might have been the case with the Cottas, Lepiduses and
+Pisos of preceding years. But Cicero determined to oppose the demagogue
+Tribune by proving himself to the people to be more of a demagogue than
+he. He succeeded, and Rullus with his agrarian law was sent back into
+darkness. I regard the second speech against Rullus as the _ne plus
+ultra_, the very _beau ideal_ of a political harangue to the people on
+the side of order and good government.
+
+I cannot finish this chapter, in which I have attempted to describe the
+lesser operations of Cicero's Consulship, without again alluding to the
+picture drawn by Virgil of a great man quelling the storms of a
+seditious rising by the gravity of his presence and the weight of his
+words.[174] The poet surely had in his memory some occasion in which had
+taken place this great triumph of character and intellect combined. When
+the knights, during Cicero's Consulship essayed to take their privileged
+places in the public theatre, in accordance with a law passed by Roscius
+Otho a few years earlier (B.C. 68), the founder of the obnoxious law
+himself entered the building. The people, enraged against a man who had
+interfered with them and their pleasures, and who had brought them, as
+it were under new restraints from the aristocracy, arose in a body and
+began to break everything that came to hand. "Tum pietate gravem!" The
+Consul was sent for. He called on the people to follow him out of the
+theatre to the Temple of Bellona, and there addressed to them that
+wonderful oration by which they were sent away not only pacified but in
+good-humor with Otho himself. "Iste regit dictis animos et pectora
+mulcet." I have spoken of Pliny's eulogy as to the great Consul's doings
+of the year. The passage is short and I will translate it:[175] "But,
+Marcus Tullius, how shall I reconcile it to myself to be silent as to
+you, or by what special glory shall I best declare your excellence? How
+better than by referring to the grand testimony given to you by the
+whole nation, and to the achievements of your Consulship as a specimen
+of your entire life? At your voice the tribes gave up their agrarian
+law, which was as the very bread in their mouths. At your persuasion
+they pardoned Otho his law and bore with good-humor the difference of
+the seats assigned to them. At your prayer the children of the
+proscribed forbore from demanding their rights of citizenship. Catiline
+was put to flight by your skill and eloquence. It was you who
+silenced[176] M. Antony. Hail, thou who wert first addressed as the
+father of your country--the first who, in the garb of peace, hast
+deserved a triumph and won the laurel wreath of eloquence." This was
+grand praise to be spoken of a man more than a hundred years after his
+death, by one who had no peculiar sympathies with him other than those
+created by literary affinity.
+
+None of Cicero's letters have come to us from the year of his
+Consulship.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+_CATILINE._
+
+
+To wash the blackamoor white has been the favorite task of some modern
+historians. To find a paradox in character is a relief to the
+investigating mind which does not care to walk always in the well-tried
+paths, or to follow the grooves made plain and uninteresting by earlier
+writers. Tiberius and even Nero have been praised. The memories of our
+early years have been shocked by instructions to regard Richard III. and
+Henry VIII. as great and scrupulous kings. The devil may have been
+painted blacker than he should be, and the minds of just men, who will
+not accept the verdict of the majority, have been much exercised to put
+the matter right. We are now told that Catiline was a popular hero;
+that, though he might have wished to murder Cicero, he was, in
+accordance with the practice of his days, not much to be blamed for
+that; and that he was simply the follower of the Gracchi, and the
+forerunner of Caesar in his desire to oppose the oligarchy of Rome.[177]
+In this there is much that is true. Murder was common. He who had seen
+the Sullan proscriptions, as both Catiline and Cicero had done, might
+well have learned to feel less scrupulous as to blood than we do in
+these days. Even Cicero, who of all the Romans was the most humane--even
+he, no doubt, would have been well contented that Catiline should have
+been destroyed by the people.[178] Even he was the cause, as we shall
+see just now, of the execution of the leaders of the conspirators whom
+Catiline left behind him in the city--an execution of which the legality
+is at any rate very doubtful. But in judging even of bloodshed we have
+to regard the circumstances of the time in the verdicts we give. Our
+consciousness of altered manners and of the growth of gentleness force
+this upon us. We cannot execrate the conspirators who murdered Caesar as
+we would do those who might now plot the death of a tyrant; nor can we
+deal as heavily with the murderers of Caesar as we would have done then
+with Catilinarian conspirators in Rome, had Catiline's conspiracy
+succeeded. And so, too, in acknowledging that Catiline was the outcome
+of the Gracchi, and to some extent the preparation for Caesar, we must
+again compare him with them, his motives and designs with theirs, before
+we can allow ourselves to sympathize with him, because there was much in
+them worthy of praise and honor.
+
+That the Gracchi were seditious no historian has, I think, denied. They
+were willing to use the usages and laws of the Republic where those
+usages and laws assisted them, but as willing to act illegally when the
+usages and laws ran counter to them. In the reforms or changes which
+they attempted they were undoubtedly rebels; but no reader comes across
+the tale of the death, first of one and then of the other, without a
+regret. It has to be owned that they were murdered in tumults which they
+themselves had occasioned. But they were honest and patriotic. History
+has declared of them that their efforts were made with the real purport
+of relieving their fellow-countrymen from what they believed to be the
+tyranny of oligarchs. The Republic even in their time had become too
+rotten to be saved; but the world has not the less given them the credit
+for a desire to do good; and the names of the two brothers, rebels as
+they were, have come down to us with a sweet savor about them. Caesar, on
+the other hand, was no doubt of the same political party. He too was
+opposed to the oligarchs, but it never occurred to him that he could
+save the Republic by any struggles after freedom. His mind was not given
+to patriotism of that sort--not to memories, not to associations. Even
+laws were nothing to him but as they might be useful. To his thinking,
+probably even in his early days, the state of Rome required a master.
+Its wealth, its pleasures, its soldiers, its power, were there for any
+one to take who could take them--for any one to hold who could hold
+them. Mr. Beesly, the last defender of Catiline, has stated that very
+little was known in Rome of Caesar till the time of Catiline's
+conspiracy, and in that I agree with him. He possessed high family rank,
+and had been Quaestor and AEdile; but it was only from this year out that
+his name was much in men's mouths, and that he was learning to look into
+things. It may be that he had previously been in league with
+Catiline--that he was in league with him till the time came for the
+great attempt. The evidence, as far as it goes, seems to show that it
+was so. Rome had been the prey of many conspiracies. The dominion of
+Marius and the dominion of Sulla had been effected by conspiracies. No
+doubt the opinion was strong with many that both Caesar and Crassus, the
+rich man, were concerned with Catiline. But Caesar was very far-seeing,
+and, if such connection existed, knew how to withdraw from it when the
+time was not found to be opportune. But from first to last he always was
+opposed to the oligarchy. The various steps from the Gracchi to him were
+as those which had to be made from the Girondists to Napoleon. Catiline,
+no doubt, was one of the steps, as were Danton and Robespierre steps.
+The continuation of steps in each case was at first occasioned by the
+bad government and greed of a few men in power. But as Robespierre was
+vile and low, whereas Vergniaud was honest and Napoleon great, so was it
+with Catiline between the Gracchi and Caesar. There is, to my thinking,
+no excuse for Catiline in the fact that he was a natural step, not even
+though he were a necessary step, between the Gracchi and Caesar.
+
+I regard as futile the attempts which are made to rewrite history on the
+base of moral convictions and philosophical conclusion. History very
+often has been, and no doubt often again will be, rewritten, with good
+effect and in the service of truth, on the finding of new facts. Records
+have been brought to light which have hitherto been buried, and
+testimonies are compared with testimonies which have not before been seen
+together. But to imagine that a man may have been good who has lain under
+the ban of all the historians, all the poets, and all the tellers of
+anecdotes, and then to declare such goodness simply in accordance with
+the dictates of a generous heart or a contradictory spirit, is to disturb
+rather than to assist history. Of Catiline we at least know that he
+headed a sedition in Rome in the year of Cicero's Consulship; that he
+left the city suddenly; that he was killed in the neighborhood of Pistoia
+fighting against the Generals of the Republic, and that he left certain
+accomplices in Rome who were put to death by an edict of the Senate. So
+much I think is certain to the most truculent doubter. From his
+contemporaries, Sallust and Cicero, we have a very strongly expressed
+opinion of his character. They have left to us denunciations of the man
+which have made him odious to all after-ages, so that modern poets have
+made him a stock character, and have dramatized him as a fiend. Voltaire
+has described him as calling upon his fellow-conspirators to murder
+Cicero and Cato, and to burn the city. Ben Jonson makes Catiline kill a
+slave and mix his blood, to be drained by his friends. "There cannot be a
+fitter drink to make this sanction in." The friends of Catiline will say
+that this shows no evidence against the man. None, certainly; but it is a
+continued expression of the feeling that has prevailed since Catiline's
+time. In his own age Cicero and Sallust, who were opposed in all their
+political views, combined to speak ill of him. In the next, Virgil makes
+him as suffering his punishment in hell.[179] In the next, Velleius
+Paterculus speaks of him as the conspirator whom Cicero had
+banished.[180] Juvenal makes various allusions to him, but all in the
+same spirit. Juvenal cared nothing for history, but used the names of
+well-known persons as illustrations of the idea which he was
+presenting.[181] Valerius Maximus, who wrote commendable little essays
+about all the virtues and all the vices, which he illustrated with the
+names of all the vicious and all the virtuous people he knew, is very
+severe on Catiline.[182] Florus, who wrote two centuries and a half after
+the conspiracy, gives us of Catiline the same personal story as that told
+both by Sallust and Cicero: "Debauchery, in the first place; and then the
+poverty which that had produced; and then the opportunity of the time,
+because the Roman armies were in distant lands, induced Catiline to
+conspire for the destruction of his country."[183] Mommsen, who was
+certainly biassed by no feeling in favor of Cicero, declares that
+Catiline in particular was "one of the most nefarious men in that
+nefarious age. His villanies belong to the criminal records, not to
+history."[184] All this is no evidence. Cicero and Sallust may possibly
+have combined to lie about Catiline. Other Roman writers may have
+followed them, and modern poets and modern historians may have followed
+the Roman writers. It is possible that the world may have been wrong as
+to a period of Roman history with which it has thought itself to be well
+acquainted; but the world now has nothing to go by but the facts as they
+have come down to it. The writers of the ages since have combined to
+speak of Cicero with respect and admiration. They have combined, also, to
+speak of Catiline with abhorrence. They have agreed, also, to treat those
+other rebels, the Gracchi, after such a fashion that, in spite of their
+sedition, a sweet savor, as I have said, attaches itself to their names.
+For myself, I am contented to take the opinion of the world, and feel
+assured that I shall do no injustice in speaking of Catiline as all who
+have written about him hitherto have spoken of him I cannot consent to
+the building up of a noble patriot out of such materials as we have
+concerning him.[185]
+
+Two strong points have been made for Catiline in Mr. Beesly's defence.
+His ancestors had been Consuls when the forefathers of patricians of a
+later date "were clapping their chapped hands and throwing up their
+sweaty nightcaps." That scorn against the people should be expressed by
+the aristocrat Casca was well supposed by Shakspeare; but how did a
+liberal of the present day bring himself to do honor to his hero by such
+allusions? In truth, however, the glory of ancient blood and the
+disgrace attaching to the signs of labor are ideas seldom relinquished
+even by democratic minds. A Howard is nowhere lovelier than in America,
+or a sweaty nightcap less relished. We are then reminded how Catiline
+died fighting, with the wounds all in front; and are told that the
+"world has generally a generous word for the memory of a brave man dying
+for his cause, be that cause what it will; but for Catiline none!" I
+think there is a mistake in the sentiment expressed here. To die readily
+when death must come is but a little thing, and is done daily by the
+poorest of mankind. The Romans could generally do it, and so can the
+Chinese. A Zulu is quite equal to it, and people lower in civilization
+than Chinese or Zulus. To encounter death, or the danger of death, for
+the sake of duty--when the choice is there; but duty and death are
+preferred to ignominious security, or, better still, to security which
+shall bring with it self-abasement--that is grand. When I hear that a
+man "rushed into the field and, foremost fighting, fell," if there have
+been no adequate occasion, I think him a fool. If it be that he has
+chosen to hurry on the necessary event, as was Catiline's case, I
+recognize him as having been endowed with certain physical attributes
+which are neither glorious nor disgraceful. That Catiline was
+constitutionally a brave man no one has denied. Rush, the murderer, was
+one of the bravest men of whom I remember to have heard. What credit is
+due to Rush is due to Catiline.
+
+What we believe to be the story of Catiline's life is this: In Sulla's
+time he was engaged, as behooved a great nobleman of ancient blood, in
+carrying out the Dictator's proscriptions and in running through
+whatever means he had. There are fearful stories told of him as to
+murdering his own son and other relatives; as to which Mr. Beesly is no
+doubt right in saying that such tales were too lightly told in Rome to
+deserve implicit confidence. To serve a purpose any one would say
+anything of any enemy. Very marvellous qualities are attributed to
+him--as to having been at the same time steeped in luxury and yet able
+and willing to bear all bodily hardships. He probably had been engaged
+in murders--as how should a man not have been so who had served under
+Sulla during the Dictatorship? He had probably allured some young
+aristocrats into debauchery, when all young aristocrats were so allured.
+He had probably undergone some extremity of cold and hunger. In reading
+of these things the reader will know by instinct how much he may
+believe, and how much he should receive as mythic. That he was a fast
+young nobleman, brought up to know no scruples, to disregard blood, and
+to look upon his country as a milch cow from which a young nobleman
+might be fed with never-ending streams of rich cream in the shape of
+money to be borrowed, wealth to be snatched, and, above all, foreigners
+to be plundered, we may take, I think, as proved. In spite of his vices,
+or by aid of them, he rose in the service of his country. That such a
+one should become a Praetor and a Governor was natural. He went to Africa
+with proconsular authority, and of course fleeced the Africans. It was
+as natural as that a flock of sheep should lose their wool at shearing
+time. He came back intent, as was natural also, on being a Consul, and
+of carrying on the game of promotion and of plunder. But there came a
+spoke in his wheel--the not unusual spoke of an accusation from the
+province. While under accusation for provincial robbery he could not
+come forward as a candidate, and thus he was stopped in his career.
+
+It is not possible now to unravel all the personal feuds of the
+time--the ins and outs of family quarrels. Clodius--the Clodius who was
+afterward Cicero's notorious enemy and the victim of Milo's fury--became
+the accuser of Catiline on behalf of the Africans. Though Clodius was
+much the younger, they were men of the same class. It may be possible
+that Clodius was appointed to the work--as it had been intended that
+Caecilius should be appointed at the prosecution of Verres--in order to
+assure not the conviction but the acquittal of the guilty man. The
+historians and biographers say that Clodius was at last bought by a
+bribe, and that he betrayed the Africans after that fashion. It may be
+that such bribery was arranged from the first. Our interest in that
+trial lies in the fact that Cicero no doubt intended, from political
+motives, to defend Catiline. It has been said that he did do so. As far
+as we know, he abandoned the intention. We have no trace of his speech,
+and no allusion in history to an occurrence which would certainly have
+been mentioned.[186] But there was _no_ reason why he should not have
+done so. He defended Fonteius, and I am quite willing to own that he
+knew Fonteius to have been a robber. When I look at the practice of our
+own times, I find that thieves and rebels are defended by honorable
+advocates, who do not scruple to take their briefs in opposition to
+their own opinions. It suited Cicero to do the same. If I were detected
+in a plot for blowing up a Cabinet Council, I do not doubt but that I
+should get the late attorney-general to defend me.[187]
+
+But Catiline, though he was acquitted, was balked in his candidature for
+the Consulship of the next year, B.C. 65. P. Sulla and Autronius were
+elected--that Sulla to whose subsequent defence I have just referred in
+this note--but were ejected on the score of bribery, and two others,
+Torquatus and Cotta, were elected in their place. In this way three men
+standing on high before their countrymen--one having been debarred from
+standing for the Consulship, and the other two having been robbed of
+their prize even when it was within their grasp--not unnaturally became
+traitors at heart. Almost as naturally they came together and conspired.
+Why should they have been selected as victims, having only done that
+which every aristocrat did as a matter of course in following out his
+recognized profession in living upon the subject nations? Their conduct
+had probably been the same as that of others, or if more glaring, only
+so much so as is always the case with vices as they become more common.
+However, the three men fell, and became the centre of a plot which is
+known as the first Catiline conspiracy.
+
+The reader must bear in mind that I am now telling the story of
+Catiline, and going back to a period of two years before Cicero's
+Consulship, which was B.C. 63. How during that year Cicero successfully
+defended Murena when Cato endeavored to rob him of his coming
+Consulship, has been already told. It may be that Murena's hands were no
+cleaner than those of Sulla and Autronius, and that they lacked only the
+consular authority and forensic eloquence of the advocate who defended
+Murena. At this time, when the two appointed Consuls were rejected,
+Cicero had hardly as yet taken any part in public politics. He had been
+Quaestor, AEdile, and Praetor, filling those administrative offices to the
+best of his ability. He had, he says, hardly heard of the first
+conspiracy.[189] That what he says is true, is, I think, proved by the
+absence of all allusion to it in his early letters, or in the speeches
+or fragments of speeches that are extant. But that there was such a
+conspiracy we cannot doubt, nor that the three men named, Catiline,
+Sulla, and Autronius, were leaders in it. What would interest us, if
+only we could have the truth, is whether Caesar and Crassus were joined
+in it.
+
+It is necessary again to consider the condition of the Republic. To us a
+conspiracy to subvert the government under which the conspirer lives
+seems either a very terrible remedy for great evils, or an attempt to do
+evil which all good men should oppose. We have the happy conspiracy in
+which Washington became the military leader, and the French Revolution,
+which, bloody as it was, succeeded in rescuing Frenchmen from the
+condition of serfdom. At home we have our own conspiracy against the
+Stuart royalty, which had also noble results. The Gracchi had attempted
+to effect something of the same kind at Rome; but the moral condition of
+the people had become so low that no real love of liberty remained.
+Conspiracy! oh yes. As long as there was anything to get, of course he
+who had not got it would conspire against him who had. There had been
+conspiracies for and against Marius, for and against Cinna, for and
+against Sulla. There was a grasping for plunder, a thirst for power
+which meant luxury, a greed for blood which grew from the hatred which
+such rivalry produced. These were the motive causes for conspiracies;
+not whether Romans should be free but whether a Sulla or a Cotta should
+be allowed to run riot in a province.
+
+Caesar at this time had not done much in the Roman world except fall
+greatly into debt. Knowing, as we do know now, his immense intellectual
+capacity, we cannot doubt but at the age he had now reached,
+thirty-five, B.C. 65, he had considered deeply his prospects in life.
+There is no reason for supposing that he had conceived the idea of being
+a great soldier. That came to him by pure accident, some years
+afterward. To be Quaestor, Praetor, and Consul, and catch what was going,
+seems to have been the cause to him of having encountered extraordinary
+debt. That he would have been a Verres, or a Fonteius, or a Catiline, we
+certainly are not entitled to think. Over whatever people he might have
+come to reign, and in whatever way he might have procured his kingdom,
+he would have reigned with a far-seeing eye, fixed upon future results.
+At this period he was looking out for a way to advance himself. There
+were three men, all just six years his senior, who had risen or were
+rising into great repute; they were Pompey, Cicero, and Catiline. There
+were two who were noted for having clean hands in the midst of all the
+dirt around; and they were undoubtedly the first Romans of the day.
+Catiline was determined that he too would be among the first Romans of
+the day; but his hands had never been clean. Which was the better way
+for such a one as Caesar to go?
+
+To have had Pompey under his feet, or Cicero, must have then seemed to
+Caesar to be impracticable, though the time came when he did, in
+different ways, have his feet on both. With Catiline the chance of
+success might be better. Crassus he had already compassed. Crassus was
+like M. Poirier in the play--a man who, having become rich, then allowed
+himself the luxury of an ambition. If Caesar joined the plot we can well
+understand that Crassus should have gone with him. We have all but
+sufficient authority for saying that it was so, but authority
+insufficient for declaring it. That Sallust, in his short account of the
+first conspiracy, should not have implicated Caesar was a matter of
+course,[190] as he wrote altogether in Caesar's interest. That Cicero
+should not have mentioned it is also quite intelligible. He did not wish
+to pull down upon his ears the whole house of the aristocracy.
+Throughout his career it was his object to maintain the tenor of the law
+with what smallest breach of it might be possible; but he was wise
+enough to know that when the laws were being broken on every side he
+could not catch in his nets all those who broke them. He had to pass
+over much; to make the best of the state of things as he found them. It
+is not to be supposed that a conspirator against the Republic would be
+horrible to him, as would be to us a traitor against the Crown: there
+were too many of them for horror. If Caesar and Crassus could be got to
+keep themselves quiet, he would be willing enough not to have to add
+them to his list of enemies. Livy is presumed to have told us that this
+conspiracy intended to restore the ejected Consuls, and to kill the
+Consuls who had been established in their place. But the book in which
+this was written is lost, and we have only the Epitome, or heading of
+the book, of which we know that it was not written by Livy.[191]
+Suetonius, who got his story not improbably from Livy, tells us that
+Caesar was suspected of having joined this conspiracy with Crassus;[192]
+and he goes on to say that Cicero, writing subsequently to one Axius,
+declared that "Caesar had attempted in his Consulship to accomplish the
+dominion which he had intended to grasp in his AEdileship" the year in
+question. There is, however, no such letter extant. Asconius, who, as I
+have said before, wrote in the time of Tiberius, declares that Cicero in
+his lost oration, "In toga candida," accused Crassus of having been the
+author of the conspiracy. Such is the information we have; and if we
+elect to believe that Caesar was then joined with Catiline, we must be
+guided by our ideas of probability rather than by evidence.[193] As I
+have said before, conspiracies had been very rife. To Caesar it was no
+doubt becoming manifest that the Republic, with its oligarchs, must
+fall. Subsequently it did fall, and he was--I will not say the
+conspirator, nor will I judge the question by saying that he was the
+traitor; but the man of power who, having the legions of the Republic in
+his hands, used them against the Republic. I can well understand that he
+should have joined such a conspiracy as this first of Catiline, and then
+have backed out of it when he found he could not trust those who were
+joined with him.
+
+This conspiracy failed. One man omitted to give a signal at one time,
+and another at another. The Senate was to have been slaughtered; the two
+Consuls, Cotta and Torquatus, murdered, and the two ex-Consuls, Sulla
+and Autronius, replaced. Though all the details seem to have been known
+to the Consuls, Catiline was allowed to go free, nor were any steps
+taken for the punishment of the conspirators.
+
+The second conspiracy was attempted in the Consulship of Cicero, B.C.
+63, two years after the first. Catiline had struggled for the
+Consulship, and had failed. Again there would be no province, no
+plunder, no power. This interference, as it must have seemed to him,
+with his peculiar privileges, had all come from Cicero. Cicero was the
+busybody who was attempting to stop the order of things which had, to
+his thinking, been specially ordained by all the gods for the sustenance
+of one so well born, and at the same time so poor, as himself. There was
+a vulgar meddling about it--all coming from the violent virtue of a
+Consul whose father had been a nobody at Arpinum--which was well
+calculated to drive Catiline into madness. So he went to work and got
+together in Rome a body of men as discontented and almost as nobly born
+as himself, and in the country north of Rome an army of rebels, and
+began his operations with very little secrecy. In all the story the most
+remarkable feature is the openness with which many of the details of the
+conspiracy were carried on. The existence of the rebel army was known;
+it was known that Catiline was the leader; the causes of his
+disaffection were known; his comrades in guilt were known When any
+special act was intended, such as might be the murder of the Consul or
+the firing of the city, secret plots were concocted in abundance. But
+the grand fact of a wide-spread conspiracy could go naked in Rome, and
+not even a Cicero dare to meddle with it.
+
+[Sidenote: B.C. 63, aetat. 44.]
+
+As to this second conspiracy, the conspiracy with which Sallust and
+Cicero have made us so well acquainted, there is no sufficient ground
+for asserting that Caesar was concerned in it.[194] That he was greatly
+concerned in the treatment of the conspirators there is no doubt. He had
+probably learned to appreciate the rage, the madness, the impotence of
+Catiline at their proper worth. He too, I think, must have looked upon
+Cicero as a meddling, over-virtuous busybody; as did even Pompey when he
+returned from the East. What practical use could there be in such a man
+at such a time--in one who really believed in honesty, who thought of
+liberty and the Republic, and imagined that he could set the world right
+by talking? Such must have been the feeling of Caesar, who had both
+experience and foresight to tell him that Rome wanted and must have a
+master. He probably had patriotism enough to feel that he, if he could
+acquire the mastership, would do something beyond robbery--would not
+satisfy himself with cutting the throats of all his enemies, and feeding
+his supporters with the property of his opponents. But Cicero was
+impracticable--unless, indeed, he could be so flattered as to be made
+useful. It was thus, I think, that Caesar regarded Cicero, and thus that
+he induced Pompey to regard him. But now, in the year of his Consulship,
+Cicero had really talked himself into power, and for this year his
+virtue must be allowed to have its full way.
+
+He did so much in this year, was so really efficacious in restraining
+for a time the greed and violence of the aristocracy, that it is not
+surprising that he was taught to believe in himself. There were, too,
+enough of others anxious for the Republic to bolster him up in his own
+belief. There was that Cornelius in whose defence Cicero made the two
+great speeches which have been unfortunately lost, and there was Cato,
+and up to this time there was Pompey, as Cicero thought. Cicero, till he
+found himself candidate for the Consulship, had contented himself with
+undertaking separate cases, in which, no doubt, politics were concerned,
+but which were not exclusively political. He had advocated the
+employment of Pompey in the East, and had defended Cornelius. He was
+well acquainted with the history of the Republic; but he had probably
+never asked himself the question whether it was in mortal peril, and if
+so, whether it might possibly be saved. In his Consulship he did do so;
+and, seeing less of the Republic than we can see now, told himself that
+it was possible.
+
+The stories told to us of Catiline's conspiracy by Sallust and by Cicero
+are so little conflicting that we can trust them both. Trusting them
+both, we are justified in believing that we know the truth. We are here
+concerned only with the part which Cicero took. Nothing, I think, which
+Cicero says is contradicted by Sallust, though of much that Cicero
+certainly did Sallust is silent. Sallust damns him, but only by faint
+praise. We may, therefore, take the account of the plot as given by
+Cicero himself as verified: indeed, I am not aware that any of Cicero's
+facts have been questioned.
+
+Sallust declares that Catiline's attempt was popular in Rome
+generally.[195] This, I think, must be taken as showing simply that
+revolution and conspiracy were in themselves popular: that, as a
+condition of things around him such as existed in Rome, a plotter of
+state plots should be able to collect a body of followers, was a thing
+of course; that there were many citizens who would not work, and who
+expected to live in luxury on public or private plunder, is certain.
+When the conspiracy was first announced in the Senate, Catiline had an
+army collected; but we have no proof that the hearts of the inhabitants
+of Rome generally were with the conspirators. On the other hand, we have
+proof, in the unparalleled devotion shown by the citizens to Cicero
+after the conspiracy was quelled, that their hearts were with him. The
+populace, fond of change, liked a disturbance; but there is nothing to
+show that Catiline was ever beloved as had been the Gracchi, and other
+tribunes of the people who came after them.
+
+Catiline, in the autumn of the year B.C. 63, had arranged the outside
+circumstances of his conspiracy, knowing that he would, for the third
+time, be unsuccessful in his canvass for the Consulship. That Cicero
+with other Senators should be murdered seems to have been their first
+object, and that then the Consulship should be seized by force. On the
+21st of October Cicero made his first report to the Senate as to the
+conspiracy, and called upon Catiline for his answer. It was then that
+Catiline made his famous reply: "That the Republic had two bodies, of
+which one was weak and had a bad head"--meaning the aristocracy, with
+Cicero as its chief--"and the other strong, but without any head,"
+meaning the people; "but that as for himself, so well had the people
+deserved of him, that as long as he lived a head should be
+forth-coming."[196] Then, at that sitting, the Senate decreed, in the
+usual formula, "That the Consuls were to take care that the Republic did
+not suffer."[197] On the 22d of October, the new Consuls, Silanus and
+Murena, were elected. On the 23d, Catiline was regularly accused of
+conspiracy by Paulus Lepidus, a young nobleman, in conformity with a law
+which had been enacted fifty-five years earlier, "de vi publica," as to
+violence applied to the State. Two days afterward it was officially
+reported that Manlius--or Mallius, as he seems to have been generally
+called--Catiline's lieutenant, had openly taken up arms in Etruria. The
+27th had been fixed by the conspirators for the murder of Cicero and the
+other Senators. That all this was to be, and was so arranged by
+Catiline, had been declared in the Senate by Cicero himself on that day
+when Catiline told them of the two bodies and the two heads. Cicero,
+with his intelligence, ingenuity, and industry, had learned every
+detail. There was one Curius among the conspirators, a fair specimen of
+the young Roman nobleman of the day, who told it all to his mistress
+Fulvia, and she carried the information to the Consul. It is all
+narrated with fair dramatic accuracy in Ben Jonson's dull play, though
+he has attributed to Caesar a share in the plot, for doing which he had
+no authority. Cicero, on that sitting in the Senate, had been specially
+anxious to make Catiline understand that he knew privately every
+circumstance of the plot. Throughout the whole conspiracy his object was
+not to take Catiline, but to drive him out of Rome. If the people could
+be stirred up to kill him in their wrath, that might be well; in that
+way there might be an end of all the trouble. But if that did not come
+to pass, then it would be best to make the city unbearable to the
+conspirators. If they could be driven out, they must either take
+themselves to foreign parts and be dispersed, or must else fight and
+assuredly be conquered. Cicero himself was never blood-thirsty, but the
+necessity was strong upon him of ridding the Republic from these
+blood-thirsty men.
+
+The scheme for destroying Cicero and the Senators on the 27th of October
+had proved abortive. On the 6th of the next month a meeting was held in
+the house of one Marcus Porcius Laeca, at which a plot was arranged for
+the killing of Cicero the next day--for the killing of Cicero alone--he
+having been by this time found to be the one great obstacle in their
+path. Two knights were told off for the service, named Vargunteius and
+Cornelius. These, after the Roman fashion, were to make their way early
+on the following morning into the Consul's bedroom for the ostensible
+purpose of paying him their morning compliments, but, when there, they
+were to slay him. All this, however, was told to Cicero, and the two
+knights, when they came, were refused admittance. If Cicero had been a
+man given to fear, as has been said of him, he must have passed a
+wretched life at this period. As far as I can judge of his words and
+doings throughout his life, he was not harassed by constitutional
+timidity. He feared to disgrace his name, to lower his authority, to
+become small in the eyes of men, to make political mistakes, to do that
+which might turn against him. In much of this there was a falling off
+from that dignity which, if we do not often find it in a man, we can all
+of us imagine; but of personal dread as to his own skin, as to his own
+life, there was very little. At this time, when, as he knew well, many
+men with many weapons in their hands, men who were altogether
+unscrupulous, were in search for his blood he never seems to have
+trembled.
+
+But all Rome trembled--even according to Sallust. I have already shown
+how he declares in one part of his narrative that the common people as a
+body were with Catiline, and have attempted to explain what was meant by
+that expression. In another, in an earlier chapter, he says "that the
+State," meaning the city, "was disturbed by all this, and its appearance
+changed.[198] Instead of the joy and ease which had lately prevailed,
+the effect of the long peace, a sudden sadness fell upon every one." I
+quote the passage because that other passage has been taken as proving
+the popularity of Catiline. There can, I think, be no doubt that the
+population of Rome was, as a body, afraid of Catiline. The city was to
+be burnt down, the Consuls and the Senate were to be murdered, debts
+were to be wiped out, slaves were probably to be encouraged against
+their masters. The "permota civitas" and the "cuncta plebes," of which
+Sallust speaks, mean that all the "householders" were disturbed, and
+that all the "roughs" were eager with revolutionary hopes.
+
+On the 8th of November, the day after that on which the Consul was to
+have been murdered in his own house, he called a special meeting of the
+Senate in the temple of Jupiter Stator. The Senate in Cicero's time was
+convened according to expedience, or perhaps as to the dignity of the
+occasion, in various temples. Of these none had a higher reputation than
+that of the special Jupiter who is held to have befriended Romulus in
+his fight with the Sabines. Here was launched that thunderbolt of
+eloquence which all English school-boys have known for its "Quousque
+tandem abutere, Catilina, patientia nostra." Whether it be from the awe
+which has come down to me from my earliest years, mixed perhaps with
+something of dread for the great pedagogue who first made the words to
+sound grandly in my ears, or whether true critical judgment has since
+approved to me the real weight of the words, they certainly do contain
+for my intelligence an expression of almost divine indignation. Then
+there follows a string of questions, which to translate would be vain,
+which to quote, for those who read the language, is surely unnecessary.
+It is said to have been a fault with Cicero that in his speeches he runs
+too much into that vein of wrathful interrogation which undoubtedly
+palls upon us in English oratory when frequent resort is made to it. It
+seems to be too easy, and to contain too little of argument. It was
+this, probably, of which his contemporaries complained when they
+declared him to be florid, redundant, and Asiatic in his style.[199]
+This questioning runs through nearly the whole speech, but the reader
+cannot fail to acknowledge its efficacy in reference to the matter in
+hand. Catiline was sitting there himself in the Senate, and the
+questions were for the most part addressed to him. We can see him now, a
+man of large frame, with bold, glaring eyes, looking in his wrath as
+though he were hardly able to keep his hands from the Consul's throat,
+even there in the Senate. Though he knew that this attack was to be made
+on him, he had stalked into the temple and seated himself in a place of
+honor, among the benches intended for those who had been Consuls. When
+there, no one spoke to him, no one saluted him. The consular Senators
+shrunk away, leaving their places of privilege. Even his
+brother-conspirators, of whom many were present, did not dare to
+recognize him. Lentulus was no doubt there, and Cethegus, and two of the
+Sullan family, and Cassius Longinus, and Autronius, and Laeca, and
+Curius. All of them were or had been conspirators in the same cause.
+Caesar was there too, and Crassus. A fellow conspirator with Catiline
+would probably be a Senator. Cicero knew them all. We cannot say that in
+this matter Caesar was guilty, but Cicero, no doubt, felt that Caesar's
+heart was with Catiline. It was his present task so to thunder with his
+eloquence that he should turn these bitter enemies into seeming
+friends--to drive Catiline from out of the midst of them, so that it
+should seem that he had been expelled by those who were in truth his
+brother-conspirators; and this it was that he did.
+
+He declared the nature of the plot, and boldly said that, such being the
+facts, Catiline deserved death. "If," he says, "I should order you to be
+taken and killed, believe me I should be blamed rather for my delay in
+doing so than for my cruelty." He spoke throughout as though all the
+power were in his own hands, either to strike or to forbear. But it was
+his object to drive him out and not to kill him. "Go," he said; "that
+camp of yours and Mallius, your lieutenant, are too long without you.
+Take your friends with you. Take them all. Cleanse the city of your
+presence. When its walls are between you and me then I shall feel myself
+secure. Among us here you may no longer stir yourself. I will not have
+it--I will not endure it. If I were to suffer you to be killed, your
+followers in the conspiracy would remain here; but if you go out, as I
+desire you, this cesspool of filth will drain itself off from out the
+city. Do you hesitate to do at my command that which you would fain do
+yourself? The Consul requires an enemy to depart from the city. Do you
+ask me whether you are to go into exile? I do not order it; but if you
+ask my counsel, I advise it." Exile was the severest punishment known by
+the Roman law, as applicable to a citizen, and such a punishment it was
+in the power of no Consul or other officer of state to inflict. Though
+he had taken upon himself the duty of protecting the Republic, still he
+could not condemn a citizen. It was to the moral effect of his words
+that he must trust: "Non jubeo, sed si me consulis, suadeo." Catiline
+heard him to the end, and then, muttering a curse, left the Senate, and
+went out of the city. Sallust tells us that he threatened to extinguish,
+in the midst of the general ruin he would create, the flames prepared
+for his own destruction. Sallust, however, was not present on the
+occasion, and the threat probably had been uttered at an earlier period
+of Catiline's career. Cicero tells us expressly, in one of his
+subsequent works, that Catiline was struck dumb.[200]
+
+Of this first Catiline oration Sallust says, that "Marcus Tullius the
+Consul, either fearing the presence of the man, or stirred to anger,
+made a brilliant speech, very useful to the Republic."[201] This, coming
+from an enemy, is stronger testimony to the truth of the story told by
+Cicero, than would have been any vehement praise from the pen of a
+friend.
+
+Catiline met some of his colleagues the same night. They were the very
+men who as Senators had been present at his confusion, and to them he
+declared his purpose of going. There was nothing to be done in the city
+by him. The Consul was not to be reached. Catiline himself was too
+closely watched for personal action. He would join the army at Faesulae
+and then return and burn the city. His friends, Lentulus, Cethegus, and
+the others, were to remain and be ready for fire and slaughter as soon
+as Catiline with his army should appear before the walls. He went, and
+Cicero had been so far successful.
+
+But these men, Lentulus, Cethegus, and the other Senators, though they
+had not dared to sit near Catiline in the Senate, or to speak a word to
+him, went about their work zealously when evening had come. A report was
+spread among the people that the Consul had taken upon himself to drive
+a citizen into exile. Catiline, the ill-used Catiline--Catiline, the
+friend of the people, had, they said, gone to Marseilles in order that
+he might escape the fury of the tyrant Consul. In this we see the
+jealousy of Romans as to the infliction of any punishment by an
+individual officer on a citizen. It was with a full knowledge of what
+was likely to come that Cicero had ironically declared that he only
+advised the conspirator to go. The feeling was so strong that on the
+next morning he found himself compelled to address the people on the
+subject. Then was uttered the second Catiline oration, which was spoken
+in the open air to the citizens at large. Here too there are words,
+among those with which he began his speech, almost as familiar to us as
+the "Quousque tandem"--"Abiit; excessit; evasit; erupit!" This Catiline,
+says Cicero, this pest of his country, raging in his madness, I have
+turned out of the city. If you like it better, I have expelled him by my
+very words. "He has departed. He has fled. He has gone out from among
+us. He has broken away!" "I have made this conspiracy plain to you all,
+as I said I would, unless indeed there may be some one here who does not
+believe that the friends of Catiline will do the same as Catiline would
+have done. But there is no time now for soft measures. We have to be
+strong-handed. There is one thing I will do for these men. Let them too
+go out, so that Catiline shall not pine for them. I will show them the
+road. He has gone by the Via Aurelia. If they will hurry they may catch
+him before night." He implies by this that the story about Marseilles
+was false. Then he speaks with irony of himself as that violent Consul
+who could drive citizens into exile by the very breath of his mouth.
+"Ego vehemens ille consul qui verbo cives in exsilium ejicio." So he
+goes on, in truth defending himself, but leading them with him to take
+part in the accusation which he intends to bring against the chief
+conspirators who remain in the city. If they too will go, they may go
+unscathed; if they choose to remain, let them look to themselves.
+
+Through it all we can see there is but one thing that he fears--that he
+shall be driven by the exigencies of the occasion to take some steps
+which shall afterward be judged not to have been strictly legal, and
+which shall put him into the power of his enemies when the day of his
+ascendency shall have passed away. It crops out repeatedly in these
+speeches.[202] He seems to be aware that some over-strong measure will
+be forced upon him for which he alone will be held responsible. If he
+can only avoid that, he will fear nothing else; if he cannot avoid it,
+he will encounter even that danger. His foresight was wonderfully
+accurate. The strong hand was used, and the punishment came upon him,
+not from his enemies but from his friends, almost to the bursting of his
+heart.
+
+Though the Senate had decreed that the Consuls were to see that the
+Republic should take no harm, and though it was presumed that
+extraordinary power was thereby conferred, it is evident that no power
+was conferred of inflicting punishment. Antony, as Cicero's colleague,
+was nothing. The authority, the responsibility, the action were, and
+were intended, to remain with Cicero. He could not legally banish any
+one. It was only too evident that there must be much slaughter. There
+was the army of rebels with which it would be necessary to fight. Let
+them go, these rebels within the city, and either join the army and get
+themselves killed, or else disappear, whither they would, among the
+provinces. The object of this second Catiline oration, spoken to the
+people, was to convince the remaining conspirators that they had better
+go, and to teach the citizens generally that in giving such counsel he
+was "banishing" no one. As far as the citizens were concerned he was
+successful; but he did not induce the friends of Catiline to follow
+their chief. This took place on the 9th of November. After the oration
+the Senate met again, and declared Catiline and Mallius to be public
+enemies.
+
+Twenty-four days elapsed before the third speech was spoken--twenty-four
+days during which Rome must have been in a state of very great fever.
+Cicero was actively engaged in unravelling the plots the details of
+which were still being carried on within the city; but nevertheless he
+made that speech for Murena before the judicial bench of which I gave an
+account in the last chapter, and also probably another for Piso, of
+which we have nothing left. We cannot but marvel that he should have
+been able at such a time to devote his mind to such subjects, and
+carefully to study all the details of legal cases. It was only on
+October 21st that Murena had been elected Consul; and yet on the 20th of
+November Cicero defended him with great skill on a charge of bribery.
+There is an ease, a playfulness, a softness, a drollery about this
+speech which appears to be almost incompatible with the stern, absorbing
+realities and great personal dangers in the midst of which he was
+placed; but the agility of his mind was such that there appears to have
+been no difficulty to him in these rapid changes.
+
+On the same day, the 20th of November, when Cicero was defending Murena,
+the plot was being carried on at the house of a certain Roman lady named
+Sempronia. It was she of whom Sallust said that she danced better than
+became an honest woman. If we can believe Sallust, she was steeped in
+luxury and vice. At her house a most vile project was hatched for
+introducing into Rome Rome's bitterest foreign foes. There were in the
+city at this time certain delegates from a people called the Allobroges,
+who inhabited the lower part of Savoy. The Allobroges were of Gaulish
+race. They were warlike, angry, and at the present moment peculiarly
+discontented with Rome. There had been certain injuries, either real or
+presumed, respecting which these delegates had been sent to the city.
+There they had been delayed, and fobbed off with official replies which
+gave no satisfaction, and were supposed to be ready to do any evil
+possible to the Republic. What if they could be got to go back suddenly
+to their homes, and bring a legion of red-haired Gauls to assist the
+conspirators in burning down Rome? A deputation from the delegates came
+to Sempronia's house and there met the conspirators--Lentulus and
+others. They entered freely into the project; but having, as was usual
+with foreign embassies at Rome, a patron or peculiar friend of their own
+among the aristocracy, one Fabius Sanga by name, they thought it well to
+consult him.[203] Sanga, as a matter of course, told everything to our
+astute Consul.
+
+Then the matter was arranged with more than all the craft of a modern
+inspector of police. The Allobroges were instructed to lend themselves
+to the device, stipulating, however, that they should have a written
+signed authority which they could show to their rulers at home. The
+written signed documents were given to them. With certain conspirators
+to help them out of the city they were sent upon their way. At a bridge
+over the Tiber they were stopped by Cicero's emissaries. There was a
+feigned fight, but no blood was shed; and the ambassadors with their
+letters were brought home to the Consul.
+
+We are astonished at the marvellous folly of these conspirators, so that
+we could hardly have believed the story had it not been told alike by
+Cicero and by Sallust, and had not allusion to the details been common
+among later writers.[204] The ambassadors were taken at the Milvian
+bridge early on the morning of the 3d of December, and in the course of
+that day Cicero sent for the leaders of the conspiracy to come to him.
+Lentulus, who was then Praetor, Cethegus, Gabinius, and Statilius all
+obeyed the summons. They did not know what had occurred, and probably
+thought that their best hope of safety lay in compliance. Caeparius was
+also sent for, but he for the moment escaped--in vain; for before two
+days were over he had been taken and put to death with the others.
+Cicero again called the Senate together, and entered the meeting leading
+the guilty Praetor by the hand. Here the offenders were examined and
+practically acknowledged their guilt. The proofs against them were so
+convincing that they could not deny it. There were the signatures of
+some; arms were found hidden in the house of another. The Senate decreed
+that the men should be kept in durance till some decision as to their
+fate should have been pronounced. Each of them was then given in custody
+to some noble Roman of the day. Lentulus the Praetor was confided to the
+keeping of a Censor, Cethegus to Cornificius, Statilius to Caesar,
+Gabinius to Crassus, and Caeparius, who had not fled very far before he
+was taken, to one Terentius. We can imagine how willingly would Crassus
+and Caesar have let their men go, had they dared. But Cicero was in the
+ascendant. Caesar, whom we can imagine to have understood that the hour
+had not yet come for putting an end to the effete Republic, and to have
+perceived also that Catiline was no fit helpmate for him in such a work,
+must bide his time, and for the moment obey. That he was inclined to
+favor the conspirators there is no doubt; but at present he could
+befriend them only in accordance with the law. The Allobroges were
+rewarded. The Praetors in the city who had assisted Cicero were thanked.
+To Cicero himself a supplication was decreed. A supplication was, in its
+origin, a thanksgiving to the gods on account of a victory, but had come
+to be an honor shown to the General who had gained the victory. In this
+case it was simply a means of adding glory to Cicero, and was peculiar,
+as hitherto the reward had only been conferred for military
+service.[205] Remembering that, we can understand what at the time must
+have been the feeling in Rome as to the benefits conferred by the
+activity and patriotism of the Consul.
+
+On the evening of the same day, the 3d of December, Cicero again
+addressed the people, explaining to them what he had done, and what he
+had before explained in the Senate. This was the third Catiline speech,
+and for rapid narrative is perhaps surpassed by nothing that he ever
+spoke. He explains again the motives by which he had been actuated; and
+in doing so extols the courage, the sagacity, the activity of Catiline,
+while he ridicules the folly and the fury of the others.[206] Had
+Catiline remained, he says, we should have been forced to fight with him
+here in the city; but with Lentulus the sleepy, and Cassius the fat, and
+Cethegus the mad, it has been comparatively easy to deal. It was on this
+account that he had got rid of him, knowing that their presence would do
+no harm. Then he reminds the people of all that the gods have done for
+them, and addresses them in language which makes one feel that they did
+believe in their gods. It is one instance, one out of many which history
+and experience afford us, in which an honest and a good man has
+endeavored to use for salutary purposes a faith in which he has not
+himself participated. Does the bishop of to-day, when he calls upon his
+clergy to pray for fine weather, believe that the Almighty will change
+the ordained seasons, and cause his causes to be inoperative because
+farmers are anxious for their hay or for their wheat? But he feels that
+when men are in trouble it is well that they should hold communion with
+the powers of heaven. So much also Cicero believed, and therefore spoke
+as he did on this occasion. As to his own religious views, I shall say
+something in a future chapter.
+
+Then in a passage most beautiful for its language, though it is hardly
+in accordance with our idea of the manner in which a man should speak of
+himself, he explains his own ambition: "For all which, my
+fellow-countrymen, I ask for no other recompense, no ornament or honor,
+no monument but that this day may live in your memories. It is within
+your breasts that I would garner and keep fresh my triumph, my glory,
+the trophies of my exploits. No silent, voiceless statue, nothing which
+can be bestowed upon the worthless, can give me delight. Only by your
+remembrance can my fortunes be nurtured--by your good words, by the
+records which you shall cause to be written, can they be strengthened
+and perpetuated. I do think that this day, the memory of which, I trust,
+may be eternal, will be famous in history because the city has been
+preserved, and because my Consulship has been glorious."[207] He ends
+the paragraph by an allusion to Pompey, admitting Pompey to a
+brotherhood of patriotism and praise. We shall see how Pompey repaid
+him.
+
+How many things must have been astir in his mind when he spoke those
+words of Pompey! In the next sentence he tells the people of his own
+danger. He has taken care of their safety; it is for them to take care
+of his.[208] But they, these Quirites, these Roman citizens, these
+masters of the world, by whom everything was supposed to be governed,
+could take care of no one; certainly not of themselves, as certainly not
+of another. They could only vote, now this way and now that, as somebody
+might tell them, or more probably as somebody might pay them. Pompey was
+coming home, and would soon be the favorite. Cicero must have felt that
+he had deserved much of Pompey, but was by no means sure that the debt
+of gratitude would be paid.
+
+Now we come to the fourth or last Catiline oration, which was made to
+the Senate, convened on the 5th of December with the purpose of deciding
+the fate of the leading conspirators who were held in custody. We learn
+to what purport were three of the speeches made during this
+debate--those of Caesar and of Cato and of Cicero. The first two are
+given to us by Sallust, but we can hardly think that we have the exact
+words. The Caesarean spirit which induced Sallust to ignore altogether
+the words of Cicero would have induced him to give his own
+representation of the other two, even though we were to suppose that he
+had been able to have them taken down by short-hand writers--Cicero's
+words, we have no doubt, with such polishing as may have been added to
+the short-hand writers' notes by Tiro, his slave and secretary. The
+three are compatible each with the other, and we are entitled to believe
+that we know the line of argument used by the three orators.
+
+Silanus, one of the Consuls elect, began the debate by counselling
+death. We may take it for granted that he had been persuaded by Cicero
+to make this proposition. During the discussion he trembled at the
+consequences, and declared himself for an adjournment of their decision
+till they should have dealt with Catiline. Murena, the other Consul
+elect, and Catulus, the Prince of the Senate,[209] spoke for death.
+Tiberius Nero, grandfather of Tiberius the Emperor, made that
+proposition for adjournment to which Silanus gave way. Then--or I should
+rather say in the course of the debate, for we do not know who else may
+have spoken--Caesar got up and made his proposition. His purpose was to
+save the victims, but he knew well that, with such a spirit abroad as
+that existing in the Senate and the city, he could only do so not by
+absolving but by condemning. Wicked as these men might be, abominably
+wicked it was, he said, for the Senate to think of their own dignity
+rather than of the enormity of the crime. As they could not, he
+suggested, invent any new punishment adequate to so abominable a crime,
+it would be better that they should leave the conspirators to be dealt
+with by the ordinary laws. It was thus that, cunningly, he threw out the
+idea that as Senators they had no power of death. He did not dare to
+tell them directly that any danger would menace them, but he exposed the
+danger skilfully before their eyes. "Their crimes," he says again,
+"deserve worse than any torture you can inflict. But men generally
+recollect what comes last. When the punishment is severe, men will
+remember the severity rather than the crime." He argues all this
+extremely well. The speech is one of great ingenuity, whether the words
+be the words of Sallust or of Caesar. We may doubt, indeed, whether the
+general assertion he made as to death had much weight with the Senators
+when he told them that death to the wicked was a relief, whereas life
+was a lasting punishment; but when he went on to remind them of the Lex
+Porcia, by which the power of punishing a Roman citizen, even under the
+laws, was limited to banishment, unless by a plebiscite of the people
+generally ordering death, then he was efficacious. He ended by proposing
+that the goods of the conspirators should be sold, and that the men
+should be condemned to imprisonment for life, each in some separate
+town. This would, I believe, have been quite as illegal as the
+death-sentence, but it would not have been irrevocable. The Senate, or
+the people, in the next year could have restored to the men their
+liberty, and compensated them for their property. Cicero was determined
+that the men should die. They had not obeyed him by leaving the city,
+and he was convinced that while they lived the conspiracy would live
+also. He fully understood the danger, and resolved to meet it. He
+replied to Caesar, and with infinite skill refrained from the expression
+of any strong opinion, while he led his hearers to the conviction that
+death was necessary. For himself he had been told of his danger; "but if
+a man be brave in his duty death cannot be disgraceful to him; to one
+who had reached the honors of the Consulship it could not be premature;
+to no wise man could it be a misery." Though his brother, though his
+wife, though his little boy, and his daughter just married were warning
+him of his peril, not by all that would he be influenced. "Do you," he
+says, "Conscript Fathers, look to the safety of the Republic. These are
+not the Gracchi, nor Saturninus, who are brought to you for
+judgment--men who broke the laws, indeed, and therefore suffered death,
+but who still were not unpatriotic. These men had sworn to burn the
+city, to slay the Senate, to force Catiline upon you as a ruler. The
+proofs of this are in your own hands. It was for me, as your Consul, to
+bring the facts before you. Now it is for you, at once, before night, to
+decide what shall be done. The conspirators are very many; it is not
+only with these few that you are dealing. On whatever you decide, decide
+quickly. Caesar tells you of the Sempronian law[210]--the law, namely,
+forbidding the death of a Roman citizen--but can he be regarded as a
+citizen who has been found in arms against the city?" Then there is a
+fling at Caesar's assumed clemency, showing us that Caesar had already
+endeavored to make capital out of that virtue which he displayed
+afterward so signally at Alesia and Uxellodunum. Then again he speaks of
+himself in words so grand that it is impossible but to sympathize with
+him: "Let Scipio's name be glorious--he by whose wisdom and valor
+Hannibal was forced out of Italy. Let Africanus be praised loudly, who
+destroyed Carthage and Numantia, the two cities which were most hostile
+to Rome. Let Paulus be regarded as great--he whose triumph that great
+King Perses adorned. Let Marius be held in undying honor, who twice
+saved Italy from foreign yoke. Let Pompey be praised above all, whose
+noble deeds are as wide as the sun's course. Perhaps among them there
+may be a spot, too, for me; unless, indeed, to win provinces to which we
+may take ourselves in exile is more than to guard that city to which the
+conquerors of provinces may return in safety." The last words of the
+orator also are fine: "Therefore, Conscript Fathers, decide wisely and
+without fear. Your own safety, and that of your wives and children, that
+of your hearths and altars, the temples of your gods, the homes
+contained in your city, your liberty, the welfare of Italy and of the
+whole Republic are at stake. It is for you to decide. In me you have a
+Consul who will obey your decrees, and will see that they be made to
+prevail while the breath of life remains to him." Cato then spoke
+advocating death, and the Senate decreed that the men should die. Cicero
+himself led Lentulus down to the vaulted prison below, in which
+executioners were ready for the work, and the other four men were made
+to follow. A few minutes afterward, in the gleaming of the evening, when
+Cicero was being led home by the applauding multitude, he was asked
+after the fate of the conspirators. He answered them but by one word
+"Vixerunt"--there is said to have been a superstition with the Romans as
+to all mention of death--"They have lived their lives."
+
+As to what was being done outside Rome with the army of conspirators in
+Etruria, it is not necessary for the biographer of Cicero to say much.
+Catiline fought, and died fighting. The conspiracy was then over. On the
+31st of December Cicero retired from his office, and Catiline fell at
+the battle of Pistoia on the 5th of January following, B.C. 62.
+
+A Roman historian writing in the reign of Tiberius has thought it worth
+his while to remind us that a great glory was added to Cicero's consular
+year by the birth of Augustus--him who afterward became Augustus
+Caesar.[211] Had a Roman been living now, he might be excused for saying
+that it was an honor to Augustus to have been born in the year of
+Cicero's Consulship.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X.
+
+_CICERO AFTER HIS CONSULSHIP._
+
+
+The idea that the great Consul had done illegally in putting citizens to
+death was not allowed to lie dormant even for a day. It must be
+remembered that a decree of the Senate had no power as a law. The laws
+could be altered, or even a new law made, only by the people. Such was
+the constitution of the Republic. Further on, when Cicero will appeal
+as, in fact, on trial for the offence so alleged to have been committed,
+I shall have to discuss the matter; but the point was raised against
+him, even in the moment of his triumph, as he was leaving the
+Consulship. The reiteration of his self-praise had created for him many
+enemies. It had turned friends against him, and had driven men even of
+his own party to ask themselves whether all this virtue was to be
+endured. When a man assumes to be more just than his neighbors there
+will be many ways found of throwing in a shell against him. It was
+customary for a Consul when he vacated his office to make some
+valedictory speech. Cicero was probably expected to take full advantage
+of the opportunity. From other words which have come from him, on other
+occasions but on the same subject, it would not be difficult to compose
+such a speech as he might have spoken. But there were those who were
+already sick of hearing him say that Rome had been saved by his
+intelligence and courage. We can imagine what Caesar might have said
+among his friends of the expediency of putting down this self-laudatory
+Consul. As it was, Metellus Nepos, one of the Tribunes, forbade the
+retiring officer to do more than take the oath usual on leaving office,
+because he had illegally inflicted death upon Roman citizens. Metellus,
+as Tribune, had the power of stopping any official proceeding. We hear
+from Cicero himself that he was quite equal to the occasion. He swore,
+on the spur of the moment, a solemn oath, not in accordance with the
+form common to Consuls on leaving office, but to the effect that during
+his Consulship Rome had been saved by his work alone.[212] We have the
+story only as it is told by Cicero himself, who avers that the people
+accepted the oath as sworn with exceeding praise.[213] That it was so we
+may, I think, take as true. There can be no doubt as to Cicero's
+popularity at this moment, and hardly a doubt also as to the fact that
+Metellus was acting in agreement with Caesar, and also in accord with the
+understood feelings of Pompey, who was absent with his army in the East.
+This Tribune had been till lately an officer under Pompey, and went into
+office together with Caesar, who in that year became Praetor. This,
+probably, was the beginning of the party which two years afterward
+formed the first Triumvirate, B.C. 60. It was certainly now, in the year
+succeeding the Consulship of Cicero, that Caesar, as Praetor, began his
+great career.
+
+[Sidenote: B.C. 62, aetat. 45.]
+
+It becomes manifest to us, as we read the history of the time, that the
+Dictator of the future was gradually entertaining the idea that the old
+forms of the Republic were rotten, and that any man who intended to
+exercise power in Rome or within the Roman Empire must obtain it and
+keep it by illegal means. He had probably adhered to Catiline's first
+conspiracy, but only with such moderate adhesion as enabled him to
+withdraw when he found that his companions were not fit for the work. It
+is manifest that he sympathized with the later conspiracy, though it may
+be doubted whether he himself had ever been a party to it. When the
+conspiracy had been crushed by Cicero, he had given his full assent to
+the crushing of it. We have seen how loudly he condemned the wickedness
+of the conspirators in his endeavor to save their lives. But, through it
+all, there was a well-grounded conviction in his mind that Cicero, with
+all his virtues, was not practical. Not that Cicero was to him the same
+as Cato, who with his Stoic grandiloquence must, to his thinking, have
+been altogether useless. Cicero, though too virtuous for supreme rule,
+too virtuous to seize power and hold it, too virtuous to despise as
+effete the institutions of the Republic, was still a man so gifted, and
+capable in so many things, as to be very great as an assistant, if he
+would only condescend to assist. It is in this light that Caesar seems to
+have regarded Cicero as time went on; admiring him, liking him, willing
+to act with him if it might be possible, but not the less determined to
+put down all the attempts at patriotic republican virtue in which the
+orator delighted to indulge. Mr. Forsyth expresses an opinion that
+Caesar, till he crossed the Rubicon after his ten years' fighting in
+Gaul, had entertained no settled plan of overthrowing the Constitution.
+Probably not; nor even then. It may be doubted whether Caesar ever spoke
+to himself of overthrowing the Constitution. He came gradually to see
+that power and wealth were to be obtained by violent action, and only by
+violent action. He had before him the examples of Marius and Sulla, both
+of whom had enjoyed power and had died in their beds. There was the
+example, also, of others who, walking unwarily in those perilous times,
+had been banished as was Verres, or killed as was Catiline. We can
+easily understand that he, with his great genius, should have
+acknowledged the need both of courage and caution. Both were exercised
+when he consented to be absent from Rome, and almost from Italy, during
+the ten years of the Gallic wars. But this, I think, is certain, that
+from the time in which his name appears prominent--from the period,
+namely, of the Catiline conspiracy--he had determined not to overthrow
+the Constitution, but so to carry himself, amid the great affairs of the
+day, as not to be overthrown himself.
+
+Of what nature was the intercourse between him and Pompey when Pompey
+was still absent in the East we do not know; but we can hardly doubt
+that some understanding had begun to exist. Of this Cicero was probably
+aware. Pompey was the man whom Cicero chose to regard as his
+party-leader, not having himself been inured to the actual politics of
+Rome early enough in life to put himself forward as the leader of his
+party. It had been necessary for him, as a "novus homo," to come forward
+and work as an advocate, and then as an administrative officer of the
+State, before he took up with politics. That this was so I have shown by
+quoting the opening words of his speech Pro Lege Manilia. Proud as he
+was of the doings of his Consulship, he was still too new to his work to
+think that thus he could claim to stand first. Nor did his ambition lead
+him in that direction. He desired personal praise rather than personal
+power. When in the last Catiline oration to the people he speaks of the
+great men of the Republic--of the two Scipios, and of Paulus AEmilius and
+of Marius--he adds the name of Pompey to these names; or gives, rather,
+to Pompey greater glory than to any of them; "Anteponatur omnibus
+Pompeius." This was but a few days before Metellus as Tribune had
+stopped him in his speech--at the instigation, probably, of Caesar, and
+in furtherance of Pompey's views. Pompey and Caesar could agree, at any
+rate, in this--that they did not want such a one as Cicero to interfere
+with them.
+
+All of which Cicero himself perceived. The specially rich province of
+Macedonia, which would have been his had he chosen to take it on
+quitting the Consulship, he made over to Antony--no doubt as a bribe, as
+with us one statesman may resign a special office to another to keep
+that other from kicking over the traces. Then Gaul became his province,
+as allotted--Cisalpine Gaul, as northern Italy was then called; a
+province less rich in plunder and pay than Macedonia. But Cicero wanted
+no province, and had contrived that this should be confided to Metellus
+Celer, the brother of Nepos, who, having been Praetor when he himself was
+Consul, was entitled to a government. This too was a political bribe. If
+courtesy to Caesar, if provinces given up here and there to Antonys and
+Metelluses, if flattery lavished on Pompey could avail anything, he
+could not afford to dispense with such aids. It all availed nothing.
+From this time forward, for the twenty years which were to run before
+his death, his life was one always of trouble and doubt, often of
+despair, and on many occasions of actual misery. The source of this was
+that Pompey whom, with divine attributes, he had extolled above all
+other Romans.
+
+The first extant letter written by Cicero after his Consulship was
+addressed to Pompey.[214] Pompey was still in the East, but had
+completed his campaigns against Mithridates successfully. Cicero begins
+by congratulating him, as though to do so were the purpose of his
+letter. Then he tells the victorious General that there were some in
+Rome not so well pleased as he was at these victories. It is supposed
+that he alluded here to Caesar; but, if so, he probably misunderstood the
+alliance which was already being formed between Caesar and Pompey. After
+that comes the real object of the epistle. He had received letters from
+Pompey congratulating him in very cold language as to the glories of his
+Consulship. He had expected much more than that from the friend for whom
+he had done so much. Still, he thanks his friend, explaining that the
+satisfaction really necessary to him was the feeling that he had behaved
+well to his friend. If his friend were less friendly to him in return,
+then would the balance of friendship be on his side. If Pompey were not
+bound to him, Cicero, by personal gratitude, still would he be bound by
+necessary co-operation in the service of the Republic. But, lest Pompey
+should misunderstand him, he declares that he had expected warmer
+language in reference to his Consulship, which he believes to have been
+withheld by Pompey lest offence should be given to some third person. By
+this he means Caesar, and those who were now joining themselves to Caesar.
+Then he goes on to warn him as to the future: "Nevertheless, when you
+return, you will find that my actions have been of such a nature that,
+even though you may loom larger than Scipio, I shall be found worthy to
+be accepted as your Laelius."[215]
+
+Infinite care had been given to the writing of this letter, and sharp
+had been the heart-burnings which dictated it. It was only by asserting
+that he, on his own part, was satisfied with his own fidelity as a
+friend, that Cicero could express his dissatisfaction at Pompey's
+coldness. It was only by continuing to lavish upon Pompey such flattery
+as was contained in the reference to Scipio, in which a touch of subtle
+irony is mixed with the flattery, that he could explain the nature of
+the praise which had, he thought, been due to himself. There is
+something that would have been abject in the nature of these
+expressions, had it not been Roman in the excess of the adulation. But
+there is courage in the letter, too, when he tells his correspondent
+what he believes to have been the cause of the coldness of which he
+complains: "Quod verere ne cujus animum offenderes"--"Because you fear
+lest you should give offence to some one." But let me tell you, he goes
+on to say, that my Consulship has been of such a nature that you,
+Scipio, as you are, must admit me as your friend.
+
+In these words we find a key to the whole of Cicero's connection with
+the man whom he recognizes as his political leader. He was always
+dissatisfied with Pompey; always accusing Pompey in his heart of
+ingratitude and insincerity; frequently speaking to Atticus with bitter
+truth of the man's selfishness and incapacity, even of his cruelty and
+want of patriotism; nicknaming him because of his absurdities; declaring
+of him that he was minded to be a second Sulla; but still clinging to
+him as the political friend and leader whom he was bound to follow. In
+their earlier years, when he could have known personally but little of
+Pompey, because Pompey was generally absent from Rome, he had taken it
+into his head to love the man. He had been called "Magnus;" he had been
+made Consul long before the proper time; he had been successful on
+behalf of the Republic, and so far patriotic. He had hitherto adhered to
+the fame of the Republic. At any rate, Cicero had accepted him, and
+could never afterward bring himself to be disloyal to the leader with
+whom he had professed to act. But the feeling evinced in this letter was
+carried on to the end. He had been, he was, he would be, true to his
+political connection with Pompey; but of Pompey's personal character to
+himself he had nothing but complaints to make.
+
+[Sidenote: B.C. 62, aetat. 45.]
+
+We have two other letters written by Cicero in this year, the first of
+which is in answer to one from Metellus Celer to him, also extant.
+Metellus wrote to complain of the ill-treatment which he thought he had
+received from Cicero in the Senate, and from the Senate generally.
+Cicero writes back at much greater length to defend himself, and to
+prove that he had behaved as a most obliging friend to his
+correspondent, though he had received a gross affront from his
+correspondent's brother Nepos. Nepos had prevented him in that matter of
+the speech. It is hardly necessary to go into the question of this
+quarrel, except in so far as it may show how the feeling which led to
+Cicero's exile was growing up among many of the aristocracy in Rome.
+There was a counterplot going on at the moment--a plot on the behalf of
+the aristocracy for bringing back Pompey to Rome, not only with glory
+but with power, probably originating in a feeling that Pompey would be a
+more congenial master than Cicero. It was suggested that as Pompey had
+been found good in all State emergencies--for putting down the pirates,
+for instance, and for conquering Mithridates--he would be the man to
+contend in arms with Catiline. Catiline was killed before the matter
+could be brought to an issue, but still the conspiracy went on, based on
+the jealousy which was felt in regard to Cicero. This man, who had
+declared so often that he had served his country, and who really had
+crushed the Catilinarians by his industry and readiness, might, after
+all, be coming forward as another Sulla, and looking to make himself
+master by dint of his virtues and his eloquence. The hopelessness of the
+condition of the Republic may be recognized in the increasing
+conspiracies which were hatched on every side. Metellus Nepos was sent
+home from Asia in aid of the conspiracy, and got himself made Tribune,
+and stopped Cicero's speech. In conjunction with Caesar, who was Praetor,
+he proposed his new law for the calling of Pompey to their aid. Then
+there was a fracas between him and Caesar on the one side and Cato on the
+other, in which Cato at last was so far victorious that both Caesar and
+Metellus were stopped in the performance of their official duties. Caesar
+was soon reinstated, but Metellus Nepos returned to Pompey in the East,
+and nothing came of the conspiracy. It is only noticed here as evidence
+of the feeling which existed as to Cicero in Rome, and as explaining the
+irritation on both sides indicated in the correspondence between Cicero
+and Metellus Celer, the brother of Nepos,[216] whom Cicero had procured
+the government of Gaul.
+
+The third letter from Cicero in this year was to Sextius, who was then
+acting as Quaestor--or Proquaestor, as Cicero calls him--with Antony as
+Proconsul in Macedonia. It is specially interesting as telling us that
+the writer had just completed the purchase of a house in Rome from
+Crassus for a sum amounting to about L30,000 of our money. There was
+probably no private mansion in Rome of greater pretension. It had been
+owned by Livius Drusus, the Tribune--a man of colossal fortune, as we
+are told by Mommsen--who was murdered at the door of it thirty years
+before. It afterward passed into the hands of Crassus the rich, and now
+became the property of Cicero. We shall hear how it was destroyed during
+his exile, and how fraudulently made over to the gods, and then how
+restored to Cicero, and how rebuilt at the public expense. The history
+of the house has been so well written that we know even the names of
+Cicero's two successors in it, Censorinus and Statilius.[217]
+
+It is interesting to know the sort of house which Cicero felt to be
+suitable to his circumstances, for by that we may guess what his
+circumstances were. In making this purchase he is supposed to have
+abandoned the family house in which his father had lived next door to
+the new mansion, and to have given it up to his brother. Hence we may
+argue that he had conceived himself to have risen in worldly
+circumstances. Nevertheless, we are informed by himself in this letter
+to Sextius that he had to borrow money for the occasion--so much so
+that, being a man now indebted, he might be supposed to be ripe for any
+conspiracy. Hence has come to us a story through Aulus Gellius, the
+compiler of anecdotes, to the effect that Cicero was fain to borrow this
+money from a client whose cause he undertook in requital for the favor
+so conferred. Aulus Gellius collected his stories two centuries
+afterward for the amusement of his children, and has never been regarded
+as an authority in matters for which confirmation has been wanting.
+There is no allusion to such borrowing from a client made by any
+contemporary. In this letter to Sextius, in which he speaks jokingly of
+his indebtedness, he declares that he has been able to borrow any amount
+he wanted at six per cent--twelve being the ordinary rate--and gives as
+a reason for this the position which he has achieved by his services to
+the State. Very much has been said of the story, as though the purchaser
+of the house had done something of which he ought to have been ashamed,
+but this seems to have sprung entirely from the idea that a man who, in
+the midst of such wealth as prevailed at Rome, had practised so widely
+and so successfully the invaluable profession of an advocate, must
+surely have taken money for his services. He himself has asserted that
+he took none, and all the evidence that we have goes to show that he
+spoke the truth. Had he taken money, even as a loan, we should have
+heard of it from nearer witnesses than Aulus Gellius, if, as Aulus
+Gellius tells us, it had become known at the time. But because he tells
+his friend that he has borrowed money for the purpose, he is supposed to
+have borrowed it in a disgraceful manner! It will be found that all the
+stones most injurious to Cicero's reputation have been produced in the
+same manner. His own words have been misinterpreted--either the purport
+of them, if spoken in earnest, or their bearing, if spoken in joke--and
+then accusations have been founded on them.[218]
+
+Another charge of dishonest practice was about this time made against
+Cicero without a grain of evidence, though indeed the accusations so
+made, and insisted upon, apparently from a feeling that Cicero cannot
+surely have been altogether clean when all others were so dirty, are too
+numerous to receive from each reader's judgment that indignant denial to
+which each is entitled. The biographer cannot but fear that when so much
+mud has been thrown some will stick, and therefore almost hesitates to
+tell of the mud, believing that no stain of this kind has been in truth
+deserved.
+
+It seems that Antony, Cicero's colleague in the Consulship, who became
+Proconsul in Macedonia, had undertaken to pay some money to Cicero. Why
+the money was to be paid we do not know, but there are allusions in
+Cicero's letters to Atticus to one Teucris (a Trojan woman), and it
+seems that Antony was designated by the nickname. Teucris is very slow
+at paying his money, and Cicero is in want of it. But perhaps it will be
+as well not to push the matter. He, Antony, is to be tried for
+provincial peculation, and Cicero declares that the case is so bad that
+he cannot defend his late colleague. Hence have arisen two different
+suspicions: one that Antony had agreed to make over to Cicero a share of
+the Macedonian plunder in requital of Cicero's courtesy in giving up the
+province which had been allotted to himself; the second, that Antony was
+to pay Cicero for defending him. As to the former, Cicero himself
+alludes to such a report as being common in Macedonia, and as having
+been used by Antony himself as an excuse for increased rapine. But this
+has been felt to be incredible, and has been allowed to fall to the
+ground because of the second accusation. But in support of that there is
+no word of evidence,[219] whereas the tenor of the story as told by
+Cicero himself is against it. Is it likely, would it be possible, that
+Cicero should have begun his letter to Atticus by complaining that he
+could not get from Antony money wanted for a peculiar purpose--it was
+wanted for his new house--and have gone on in the same letter to say
+that this might be as well, after all, as he did not intend to perform
+the service for which the money was to be paid? The reader will remember
+that the accusation is based solely on Cicero's own statement that
+Antony was negligent in paying to him money that had been promised. In
+all these accusations the evidence against Cicero, such as it is, is
+brought exclusively from Cicero's own words. Cicero did afterward defend
+this Antony, as we learn from his speech Pro Domo Sua; but his change of
+purpose in that respect has nothing to do with the argument.
+
+[Sidenote: B.C. 62, aetat. 45.]
+
+We have two speeches extant made this year: one on behalf of P. Sulla,
+nephew to the Dictator; the other for Archias the Greek scholar and
+poet, who had been Cicero's tutor and now claimed to be a citizen of
+Rome. I have already given an extract from this letter, as showing the
+charm of words with which Cicero could recommend the pursuit of
+literature to his hearers. The whole oration is a beautiful morsel of
+Latinity, in which, however, strength of argument is lacking. Cicero
+declares of Archias that he was so eminent in literature that, if not a
+Roman citizen, he ought to be made one. The result is not known, but the
+literary world believes that the citizenship was accorded to him.[220]
+
+The speech on behalf of Sulla was more important, but still not of much
+importance. This Sulla, as may be remembered, had been chosen as Consul
+with Autronius, two years before the Consulship of Cicero, and he had
+then after his election been deposed for bribery, as had also Autronius.
+L. Aurelius Cotta and L. Manlius Torquatus had been elected in their
+places. It has also been already explained that the two rejected Consuls
+had on this account joined Catiline in his first conspiracy. There can
+be no doubt that whether as Consuls or as rejected Consuls, and on that
+account conspirators, their purpose was to use their position as
+aristocrats for robbing the State. They were of the number of those to
+whom no other purpose was any longer possible. Then there came
+Catiline's second conspiracy--the conspiracy which Cicero had
+crushed--and there naturally rose the question whether from time to time
+this or the other noble Roman should not be accused of having joined it.
+Many noble Romans had no doubt joined besides those who had fallen
+fighting, or who had been executed in the dungeons. Accusations became
+very rife. One Vettius accused Caesar, the Praetor; but Caesar, with that
+potentiality which was peculiar to him, caused Vettius to be put into
+prison instead of going to prison himself. Many were convicted and
+banished; among them Porcius Laeca, Vargunteius, Servius Sulla, the
+brother of him of whom we are now speaking, and Autronius his colleague.
+In the trial of these men Cicero took no part. He was specially invited
+by Autronius, who was an old school-fellow, to defend him, but he
+refused; indeed, he gave evidence against Autronius at the trial. But
+this Publius Sulla he did defend, and defended successfully. He was
+joined in the case with Hortensius, and declared that as to the matter
+of the former conspiracy he left all that to his learned friend, who was
+concerned with political matters of that date.[221] He, Cicero, had
+known nothing about them. The part of the oration which most interests
+us is that in which he defends himself from the accusations somewhat
+unwisely made against himself personally by young Torquatus, the son of
+him who had been raised to the Consulship in the place of P. Sulla.
+Torquatus had called him a foreigner because he was a "novus homo," and
+had come from the municipality of Arpinum, and had taunted him with
+being a king, because he had usurped authority over life and death in
+regard to Lentulus and the other conspirators. He answers this very
+finely, and does so without an ill-natured word to young Torquatus,
+whom, from respect to his father, he desires to spare. "Do not," he
+says, "in future call me a foreigner, lest you be answered with
+severity, nor a king, lest you be laughed at--unless, indeed, you think
+it king-like so to live as to be a slave not only to no man but to no
+evil passion; unless you think it be king-like to despise all lusts, to
+thirst for neither gold nor silver nor goods, to express yourself freely
+in the Senate, to think more of services due to the people than of
+favors won from them, to yield to none, and to stand firm against many.
+If this be king-like, then I confess that I am a king." Sulla was
+acquitted, but the impartial reader will not the less feel sure that he
+had been part and parcel with Catiline in the conspiracy. It is trusted
+that the impartial reader will also remember how many honest, loyal
+gentlemen have in our own days undertaken the causes of those whom they
+have known to be rebels, and have saved those rebels by their ingenuity
+and eloquence.
+
+At the end of this year, B.C. 62, there occurred a fracas in Rome which
+was of itself but of little consequence to Rome, and would have been of
+none to Cicero but that circumstances grew out of it which created for
+him the bitterest enemy he had yet encountered, and led to his sorest
+trouble. This was the affair of Clodius and of the mysteries of the Bona
+Dea, and I should be disposed to say that it was the greatest misfortune
+of his life, were it not that the wretched results which sprung from it
+would have been made to spring from some other source had that source
+not sufficed. I shall have to tell how it came to pass that Cicero was
+sent into exile by means of the misconduct of Clodius; but I shall have
+to show also that the misconduct of Clodius was but the tool which was
+used by those who were desirous of ridding themselves of the presence of
+Cicero.
+
+This Clodius, a young man of noble family and of debauched manners, as
+was usual with young men of noble families, dressed himself up as a
+woman, and made his way in among the ladies as they were performing
+certain religious rites in honor of the Bona Dea, or Goddess Cybele, a
+matron goddess so chaste in her manners that no male was admitted into
+her presence. It was specially understood that nothing appertaining to a
+man was to be seen on the occasion, not even the portrait of one; and it
+may possibly have been the case that Clodius effected his entrance among
+the worshipping matrons on this occasion simply because his doing so was
+an outrage, and therefore exciting. Another reason was alleged. The
+rites in question were annually held, now in the house of this matron
+and then of that, and during the occasion the very master of the house
+was excluded from his own premises. They were now being performed under
+the auspices of Pompeia, the wife of Julius Caesar, the daughter of one
+Quintus Pompeius, and it was alleged that Clodius came among the women
+worshippers for the sake of carrying on an intrigue with Caesar's wife.
+This was highly improbable, as Mr. Forsyth has pointed out to us, and
+the idea was possibly used simply as an excuse to Caesar for divorcing a
+wife of whom he was weary. At any rate, when the scandal got abroad, he
+did divorce Pompeia, alleging that it did not suit Caesar to have his
+wife suspected.
+
+[Sidenote: B.C. 61, aetat. 46.]
+
+The story became known through the city, and early in January Cicero
+wrote to Atticus, telling him the facts: "You have probably heard that
+Publius Clodius, the son of Appius, has been taken dressed in a woman's
+clothes in the house of Caius Caesar, where sacrifice was being made for
+the people, and that he escaped by the aid of a female slave. You will
+be sorry to hear that it has given rise to a great scandal."[222] A few
+days afterward Cicero speaks of it again to Atticus at greater length,
+and we learn that the matter had been taken up by the magistrates with
+the view of punishing Clodius. Cicero writes without any strong feeling
+of his own, explaining to his friend that he had been at first a very
+Lycurgus in the affair, but that he is now tamed down.[223] Then there
+is a third letter in which Cicero is indignant because certain men of
+whom he disapproves, the Consul Piso among the number[224] are anxious
+to save this wicked young nobleman from the punishment due to him;
+whereas others of whom he approves Cato among the number, are desirous
+of seeing justice done. But it was no affair special to Cicero. Shortly
+afterward he writes again to Atticus as to the result of the trial--for
+a trial did take place--and explains to his friend how justice had
+failed. Atticus had asked him how it had come to pass that he, Cicero,
+had not exerted himself as he usually did.[225] This letter, though
+there is matter enough in it of a serious kind, yet jests with the
+Clodian affair so continually as to make us feel that he attributed no
+importance to it as regarded himself. He had exerted himself till
+Hortensius made a mistake as to the selection of the judges. After that
+he had himself given evidence. An attempt was made to prove an alibi,
+but Cicero came forward to swear that he had seen Clodius on the very
+day in question. There had, too, been an exchange of repartee in the
+Senate between himself and Clodius after the acquittal, of which he
+gives the details to his correspondent with considerable
+self-satisfaction. The passage does not enhance our idea of the dignity
+of the Senate, or of the power of Roman raillery. It was known that
+Clodius had been saved by the wholesale bribery of a large number of the
+judges. There had been twenty-five for condemning against thirty-one for
+acquittal.[226] Cicero in the Catiline affair had used a phrase with
+frequency by which he boasted that he had "found out" this and "found
+out" that--"comperisse omnia." Clodius, in the discussion before the
+trial, throws this in his teeth: "Comperisse omnia criminabatur." This
+gave rise to ill-feeling, and hurt Cicero much worse than the dishonor
+done to the Bona Dea. As for that, we may say that he and the Senate and
+the judges cared personally very little, although there was no doubt a
+feeling that it was wise to awe men's minds by the preservation of
+religious respect. Cicero had cared but little about the trial; but as
+he had been able to give evidence he had appeared as a witness, and
+enmity sprung from the words which were spoken both on one side and on
+the other. Clodius was acquitted, which concerns us not at all, and
+concerns Rome very little; but things had so come to pass at the trial
+that Cicero had been very bitter, and that Clodius had become his enemy.
+When a man was wanted, three years afterward, to take the lead in
+persecuting Cicero, Clodius was ready for the occasion.
+
+While the expediency of putting Clodius on his trial was being
+discussed, Pompey had returned from the East, and taken up his residence
+outside the city, because he was awaiting his triumph. The General, to
+whom it was given to march through the city with triumphal glory, was
+bound to make his first entrance after his victories with all his
+triumphal appendages, as though he was at that moment returning from the
+war with all his warlike spoils around him. The usage had obtained the
+strength of law, but the General was not on that account debarred from
+city employment during the interval. The city must be taken out to him
+instead of his coming into the city. Pompey was so great on his return
+from his Mithridatic victories that the Senate went out to sit with him
+in the suburbs, as he could not sit with it within the walls. We find
+him taking part in these Clodian discussions. Cicero at once writes of
+him to Athens with evident dissatisfaction. When questioned about
+Clodius, Pompey had answered with the grand air of aristocrat. Crassus
+on this occasion, between whom and Cicero there was never much
+friendship, took occasion to belaud the late great Consul on account of
+his Catiline successes. Pompey, we are told, did not bear this
+well.[227] Crassus had probably intended to produce some such effect.
+Then Cicero had spoken in answer to the remarks of Crassus, very glibly,
+no doubt, and had done his best to "show off" before Pompey, his new
+listener.[228] More than six years had passed since Pompey could have
+heard him, and then Cicero's voice had not become potential in the
+Senate. Cicero had praised Pompey with all the eloquence in his power.
+"Anteponatur omnibus Pompeius," he had said, in the last Catiline
+oration to the Senate; and Pompey, though he had not heard the words
+spoken, knew very well what had been said. Such oratory was never lost
+upon those whom it most concerned the orator to make acquainted with it.
+But in return for all this praise, for that Manilian oration which had
+helped to send him to the East, for continual loyalty, Pompey had
+replied to Cicero with coldness. He would now let Pompey know what was
+his standing in Rome. "If ever," he says to Atticus, "I was strong with
+my grand rhythm, with my quick rhetorical passages, with enthusiasm, and
+with logic, I was so now. Oh, the noise that I made on the occasion! You
+know what my voice can do. I need say no more about it, as surely you
+must have heard me away there in Epirus." The reader, I trust, will have
+already a sufficiently vivid idea of Cicero's character to understand
+the mingling of triumph and badinage, with a spark of disappointment,
+which is here expressed. "This Pompey, though I have so true to him, has
+not thought much of me--of me, the great Consul who saved Rome! He has
+now heard what even Crassus has been forced to say about me. He shall
+hear me too, me myself, and perhaps he will then know better." It was
+thus that Cicero's mind was at work while he was turning his loud
+periods. Pompey was sitting next to him listening, by no means admiring
+his admirer as that admirer expected to be admired. Cicero had probably
+said to himself that they two together, Pompey and Cicero, might suffice
+to preserve the Republic. Pompey, not thinking much of the Republic, was
+probably telling himself that he wanted no brother near the throne. When
+of two men the first thinks himself equal to the second, the second will
+generally feel himself to be superior to the first. Pompey would have
+liked Cicero better if his periods had not been so round nor his voice
+so powerful. Not that Pompey was distinctly desirous of any throne. His
+position at the moment was peculiar. He had brought back his victorious
+army from the East to Brundisium, and had then disbanded his legions. I
+will quote here the opening words from one of Mommsen's chapters:[229]
+"When Pompeius, after having transacted the affairs committed to his
+charge, again turned his eyes toward home, he found, for the second
+time, the diadem at his feet." He says farther on, explaining why Pompey
+did not lift the diadem: "The very peculiar temperament of Pompeius
+naturally turned once more the scale. He was one of those men who are
+capable, it may be, of a crime, but not of insubordination." And again:
+"While in the capital all was preparation for receiving the new monarch,
+news came that Pompeius, when barely landed at Brundisium, had broken up
+his legions, and with a small escort had entered his journey to the
+capital. If it is a piece of good-fortune to gain a crown without
+trouble, fortune never did more for mortal than it did for Pompeius; but
+on those who lack courage the gods lavish every favor and every gift in
+vain." I must say here that, while I acknowledge the German historian's
+research and knowledge without any reserve, I cannot accept his
+deductions as to character. I do not believe that Pompey found any
+diadem at his feet, or thought of any diadem, nor, according to my
+reading of Roman history, had Marius or had Sulla; nor did Caesar. The
+first who thought of that perpetual rule--a rule to be perpetuated
+during the ruler's life, and to be handed down to his successors--was
+Augustus. Marius, violent, self-seeking, and uncontrollable, had tumbled
+into supreme power; and, had he not died, would have held it as long as
+he could, because it pleased his ambition for the moment. Sulla, with a
+purpose, had seized it, yet seems never to have got beyond the old Roman
+idea of a temporary Dictatorship. The old Roman horror of a king was
+present to these Romans, even after they had become kings. Pompey, no
+doubt, liked to be first, and when he came back from the East thought
+that by his deeds he was first, easily first. Whether Consul year after
+year, as Marius had been, or Dictator, as Sulla had been, or Imperator,
+with a running command over all the Romans, it was his idea still to
+adhere to the forms of the Republic. Mommsen, foreseeing--if an
+historian can be said to foresee the future from his standing-point in
+the past--that a master was to come for the Roman Empire, and giving all
+his sympathies to the Caesarean idea, despises Pompey because Pompey
+would not pick up the diadem. No such idea ever entered Pompey's head.
+After a while he "Sullaturized"--was desirous of copying Sulla--to use
+an excellent word which Cicero coined. When he was successfully opposed
+by those whom he had thought inferior to himself, when he found that
+Caesar had got the better of him, and that a stronger body of Romans went
+with Caesar than with him, then proscriptions, murder, confiscations, and
+the seizing of dictatorial power presented themselves to his angry mind,
+but of permanent despotic power there was, I think, no thought, nor, as
+far as I can read the records, had such an idea been fixed in Caesar's
+bosom. To carry on the old trade of Praetor, Consul, Proconsul, and
+Imperator, so as to get what he could of power and wealth and dignity in
+the scramble, was, I think, Caesar's purpose. The rest grew upon him. As
+Shakspeare, sitting down to write a play that might serve his theatre,
+composed some Lear or Tempest--that has lived and will live forever,
+because of the genius which was unknown to himself--so did Caesar, by his
+genius, find his way to a power which he had not premeditated. A much
+longer time is necessary for eradicating an idea from men's minds than a
+fact from their practice. This should be proved to us by our own loyalty
+to the word "monarch," when nothing can be farther removed from a
+monarchy than our own commonwealth. From those first breaches in
+republican practice which the historian Florus dates back to the siege
+of Numantia,[230] B.C. 133, down far into the reign of Augustus, it took
+a century and a quarter to make the people understand that there was no
+longer a republican form of government, and to produce a leader who
+could himself see that there was room for a despot.
+
+Pompey had his triumph; but the same aristocratic airs which had annoyed
+Cicero had offended others. He was shorn of his honors. Only two days
+were allowed for his processions. He was irritated, jealous, and no
+doubt desirous of making his power felt; but he thought of no diadem.
+Caesar saw it all; and he thought of that conspiracy which we have since
+called the First Triumvirate.
+
+[Sidenote: B.C. 62, 61, aetat. 45, 46.]
+
+The two years to which this chapter has been given were uneventful in
+Cicero's life, and produced but little of that stock of literature by
+which he has been made one of mankind's prime favorites. Two discourses
+were written and published, and probably spoken, which are now
+lost--that, namely, to the people against Metellus, in which, no doubt,
+he put forth all that he had intended to say when Metellus stopped him
+from speaking at the expiration of his Consulship; the second, against
+Clodius and Curio, in the Senate, in reference to the discreditable
+Clodian affair. The fragments which we have of this contain those
+asperities which he retailed afterward in his letter to Atticus, and are
+not either instructive or amusing. But we learn from these fragments
+that Clodius was already preparing that scheme for entering the
+Tribunate by an illegal repudiation of his own family rank, which he
+afterward carried out, to the great detriment of Cicero's happiness. Of
+the speeches extant on behalf of Archias and P. Sulla I have spoken
+already. We know of no others made during this period. We have one
+letter besides this to Atticus, addressed to Antony, his former
+colleague, which, like many of his letters, was written solely for the
+sake of popularity.
+
+During these years he lived no doubt splendidly as one of the great men
+of the greatest city in the world. He had his magnificent new mansion in
+Rome, and his various villas, which were already becoming noted for
+their elegance and charms of upholstery and scenic beauty. Not only had
+he climbed to the top of official life himself, but had succeeded in
+taking his brother Quintus up with him. In the second of the two years,
+B.C. 61, Quintus had been sent out as Governor or Propraetor to Asia,
+having then nothing higher to reach than the Consulship, which, however,
+he never attained. This step in the life of Quintus has become famous by
+a letter which the elder brother wrote to him in the second year of his
+office, to which reference will be made in the next chapter.
+
+So far all things seemed to have gone well with Cicero. He was high in
+esteem and authority, powerful, rich, and with many people popular. But
+the student of his life now begins to see that troubles are enveloping
+him. He had risen too high not to encounter envy, and had been too loud
+in his own praise not to make those who envied him very bitter in their
+malice.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI.
+
+_THE TRIUMVIRATE._
+
+
+[Sidenote: B.C. 60, aetat. 47.]
+
+I know of no great fact in history so impalpable, so shadowy, so unreal,
+as the First Triumvirate. Every school-boy, almost every school-girl,
+knows that there was a First Triumvirate, and that it was a political
+combination made by three great Romans of the day, Julius Caesar, Pompey
+the Great, and Crassus the Rich, for managing Rome among them. Beyond
+this they know little, because there is little to know. That it was a
+conspiracy against the ordained government of the day, as much so as
+that of Catiline, or Guy Faux, or Napoleon III., they do not know
+generally, because Caesar, who, though the youngest of the three, was the
+mainspring of it, rose by means of it to such a galaxy of glory that all
+the steps by which he rose to it have been supposed to be magnificent
+and heroic. But of the method in which this Triumvirate was constructed,
+who has an idea? How was it first suggested, where, and by whom? What
+was it that the conspirators combined to do? There was no purpose of
+wholesale murder like that of Catiline for destroying the Senate, and of
+Guy Faux for blowing up the House of Lords. There was no plot arranged
+for silencing a body of legislators like that of Napoleon. In these
+scrambles that are going on every year for place and power, for
+provinces and plunder, let us help each other. If we can manage to stick
+fast by each other, we can get all the power and nearly all the plunder.
+That, said with a wink by one of the Triumvirate--Caesar, let us say--and
+assented to with a nod by Pompey and Crassus, was sufficient for the
+construction of such a conspiracy as that which I presume to have been
+hatched when the First Triumvirate was formed.[231] Mommsen, who never
+speaks of a Triumvirate under that name, except in his index,[232] where
+he has permitted the word to appear for the guidance of persons less
+well instructed than himself, connects the transaction which we call the
+First Triumvirate with a former coalition, which he describes as having
+been made in (B.C. 71) the year before the Consulship of Pompey and
+Crassus. With that we need not concern ourselves as we are dealing with
+the life of Cicero rather than with Roman history, except to say that
+Caesar, who was the motive power of the second coalition, could have had
+no personal hand in that of 71. Though he had spent his early years in
+"harassing the aristocracy," as Dean Merivale tells us, he had not been
+of sufficient standing in men's minds to be put on a par with Pompey and
+Crassus. When this First Triumvirate was formed, as the modern world
+generally calls it, or the second coalition between the democracy and
+the great military leaders, as Mommsen with greater, but not with
+perfect, accuracy describes it, Caesar no doubt had at his fingers' ends
+the history of past years. "The idea naturally occurred," says Mommsen,
+"whether * * * an alliance firmly based on mutual advantage might not be
+established between the democrats, with their ally, Crassus, on the one
+side, and Pompeius and the great capitalists on the other. For Pompeius
+such a coalition was certainly a political suicide."[233] The democracy
+here means Caesar. Caesar during his whole life had been learning that no
+good could come to any one from an effete Senate, or from republican
+forms which had lost all their salt. Democracy was in vogue with him;
+not, as I think, from any philanthropic desire for equality; not from
+any far-seeing view of fraternal citizenship under one great paternal
+lord--the study of politics had never then reached to that height--but
+because it was necessary that some one, or perhaps some two or three,
+should prevail in the coming struggle, and because he felt himself to be
+more worthy than others. He had no conscience in the matter. Money was
+to him nothing. Another man's money was the same as his own--or better,
+if he could get hold of it. That doctrine taught by Cicero that men are
+"ad justitiam natos" must have been to him simply absurd. Blood was to
+him nothing. A friend was better than a foe, and a live man than a dead.
+Blood-thirstiness was a passion unknown to him; but that tenderness
+which with us creates a horror of blood was equally unknown. Pleasure
+was sweet to him; but he was man enough to feel that a life of pleasure
+was contemptible. To pillage a city, to pilfer his all from a rich man,
+to debauch a friend's wife, to give over a multitude of women and
+children to slaughter, was as easy to him as to forgive an enemy. But
+nothing rankled with him, and he could forgive an enemy. Of courage he
+had that better sort which can appreciate and calculate danger, and then
+act as though there were none. Nothing was wrong to him but what was
+injudicious. He could flatter, cajole, lie, deceive, and rob; nay, would
+think it folly not to do so if to do so were expedient.[234] In this
+coalition he appears as supporting and supported by the people.
+Therefore Mommsen speaks of him as "the democrat." Crassus is called the
+ally of the democrats. It will be enough for us here to know that
+Crassus had achieved his position in the Senate by his enormous wealth,
+and that it was because of his wealth, which was essential to Caesar,
+that he was admitted into the league. By means of his wealth he had
+risen to power and had conquered and killed Spartacus, of the honor and
+glory of which Pompey robbed him. Then he had been made Consul. When
+Caesar had gone as Propraetor to Spain, Crassus had found the money. Now
+Caesar had come back, and was hand and glove with Crassus. When the
+division of the spoil came, some years afterward--the spoil won by the
+Triumvirate--when Caesar had half perfected his grand achievements in
+Gaul, and Crassus had as yet been only a second time Consul, he got
+himself to be sent into Syria, that by conquering the Parthians he might
+make himself equal to Caesar. We know how he and his son perished there,
+each of them probably avoiding the last extremity of misery to a
+Roman--that of falling into the hands of a barbarian enemy--by
+destroying himself. Than the life of Crassus nothing could be more
+contemptible; than the death nothing more pitiable. "For Pompeius," says
+Mommsen, "such a coalition was certainly a political suicide." As events
+turned out it became so, because Caesar was the stronger man of the two;
+but it is intelligible that at that time Pompey should have felt that he
+could not lord it over the Senate, as he wished to do, without aid from
+the democratic party. He had no well-defined views, but he wished to be
+the first man in Rome. He regarded himself as still greatly superior to
+Caesar, who as yet had been no more than Praetor, and at this time was
+being balked of his triumph because he could not at one and the same
+moment be in the city, as candidate for the Consulship, and out of the
+city waiting for his triumph. Pompey had triumphed three times, had been
+Consul at an unnaturally early age with abnormal honors, had been
+victorious east and west, and was called "Magnus." He did not as yet
+fear to be overshadowed by Caesar.[235] Cicero was his bugbear.
+
+Mommsen I believe to be right in eschewing the word "Triumvirate." I
+know no mention of it by any Roman writer as applied to this conspiracy,
+though Tacitus, Suetonius, and Florus call by that name the later
+coalition of Octavius, Antony, and Lepidus. The Langhornes, in
+translating Plutarch's life of Crassus, speak of the Triumvirate; but
+Plutarch himself says that Caesar combined "an impregnable stronghold" by
+joining the three men.[236] Paterculus and Suetonius[237] explain very
+clearly the nature of the compact, but do not use the term. There was
+nothing in the conspiracy entitling it to any official appellation,
+though, as there were three leading conspirators, that which has been
+used has been so far appropriate.
+
+[Sidenote: B.C. 60, aetat. 47.]
+
+Cicero was the bugbear to them all. That he might have been one of them,
+if ready to share the plunder and the power, no reader of the history of
+the time can doubt. Had he so chosen he might again have been a "real
+power in the State;" but to become so in the way proposed to him it was
+necessary that he should join others in a conspiracy against the
+Republic.
+
+I do not wish it to be supposed that Cicero received the overtures made
+to him with horror. Conspiracies were too common for horror; and these
+conspirators were all our Cicero's friends in one sense, though in
+another they might be his opponents. We may imagine that at first
+Crassus had nothing to do with the matter, and that Pompey would fain
+have stood aloof in his jealousy. But Caesar knew that it was well to
+have Cicero, if Cicero was to be had. It was not only his eloquence
+which was marvellously powerful, or his energy which had been shown to
+be indomitable: there was his character, surpassed by that of no Roman
+living; if only, in giving them the use of his character, he could be
+got to disregard the honor and the justice and the patriotism on which
+his character had been founded. How valuable may character be made, if
+it can be employed under such conditions! To be believed because of your
+truth, and yet to lie; to be trusted for your honesty, and yet to cheat;
+to have credit for patriotism, and yet to sell your country! The
+temptations to do this are rarely put before a man plainly, in all their
+naked ugliness. They certainly were not so presented to Cicero by Caesar
+and his associates. The bait was held out to him, as it is daily to
+others, in a form not repellent, with words fitted to deceive and
+powerful almost to persuade. Give us the advantage of your character,
+and then by your means we shall be able to save our country. Though our
+line of action may not be strictly constitutional, if you will look into
+it you will see that it is expedient. What other course is there? How
+else shall any wreck of the Republic be preserved? Would you be another
+Cato, useless and impractical? Join us, and save Rome to some purpose.
+We can understand that in such way was the lure held out to Cicero, as
+it has been to many a politician since. But when the politician takes
+the office offered to him--and the pay, though it be but that of a Lord
+of the Treasury--he must vote with his party.
+
+That Cicero doubted much whether he would or would not at this time
+throw in his lot with Caesar and Pompey is certain. To be of real
+use--not to be impractical, as was Cato--to save his country and rise
+honestly in power and glory--not to be too straitlaced, not
+over-scrupulous--giving and taking a little, so that he might work to
+good purpose with others in harness--that was his idea of duty as a
+Roman. To serve in accord with Pompey was the first dream of his
+political life, and now Pompey was in accord with Caesar. It was natural
+that he should doubt--natural that he should express his doubts. Who
+should receive them but Atticus, that "alter ego?" Cicero doubted
+whether he should cling to Pompey--as he did in every phase of his
+political life, till Pompey had perished at the mouth of the Nile. But
+at last he saw his way clear to honesty, as I think he always did. He
+tells his friend that Caesar had sent his confidential messenger, Balbus,
+to sound him. The present question is whether he shall resist a certain
+agrarian law of which he does not approve, but which is supported by
+both Pompey and Caesar, or retire from the contest and enjoy himself at
+his country villas, or boldly stay at Rome and oppose the law. Caesar
+assures him that if he will come over to them, Caesar will be always true
+to him and Pompey, and will do his best to bring Crassus into the same
+frame of mind. Then he reckons up all the good things which would accrue
+to him: "Closest friendship with Pompey--with Caesar also, should he wish
+it; the making up of all quarrels with his enemies; popularity with the
+people; ease for his old age, which was coming on him. But that
+conclusion moves me to which I came in my third book."[238] Then he
+repeats the lines given in the note below, which he had written,
+probably this very year, in a poem composed in honor of his own
+Consulship. The lines are not in themselves grand, but the spirit of
+them is magnificent: "Stick to the good cause which in your early youth
+you chose for yourself, and be true to the party you have made your
+own." "Should I doubt when the muse herself has so written," he says,
+alluding to the name of Calliope, given to this third book of his. Then
+he adds a line of Homer, very excellent for the occasion:[239] "No
+augury for the future can be better for you than that which bids you
+serve your country." "But," he says, "we will talk of all that when you
+come to me for the holidays. Your bath shall be ready for you: your
+sister and mother shall be of the party." And so the doubts are settled.
+
+Now came on the question of the Tribuneship of Clodius, in reference to
+which I will quote a passage out of Middleton, because the phrase which
+he uses exactly explains the purposes of Caesar and Pompey.
+
+[Sidenote: B.C. 60, aetat. 47.]
+
+"Clodius, who had been contriving all this while how to revenge himself
+on Cicero, began now to give an opening to the scheme which he had
+formed for that purpose. His project was to get himself chosen Tribune,
+and in that office to drive him out of the city, by the publication of a
+law which, by some stratagem or other, he hoped to obtrude on the
+people. But as all Patricians were incapable of the Tribunate, by its
+original institution so his first step was to make himself a Plebeian by
+the pretence of an adoption into a Plebeian house, which could not yet
+be done without the suffrage of the people. This case was wholly new,
+and contrary to all the forms--wanting every condition, and serving none
+of the ends which were required in regular adoptions--so that, on the
+first proposal, it seemed too extravagant to be treated seriously, and
+would soon have been hissed off with scorn, had it not been concerted
+and privately supported by persons of much more weight than Clodius.
+Caesar was at the bottom of it, and Pompey secretly favored it--not that
+they intended to ruin Cicero, but to keep him only under the lash--and
+if they could not draw him into their measures, to make him at least sit
+quiet, and let Clodius loose upon him."[240]
+
+This, no doubt, was the intention of the political leaders in Rome at
+this conjunction of affairs. It had been found impossible to draw Cicero
+gently into the net, so that he should become one of them. If he would
+live quietly at his Antian or Tusculan villa, amid his books and
+writings, he should be treated with all respect; he should be borne
+with, even though he talked so much of his own Consulate. But if he
+would interfere with the politics of the day, and would not come into
+the net, then he must be dealt with. Caesar seems to have respected
+Cicero always, and even to have liked him; but he was not minded to put
+up with a "friend" in Rome who from day to day abused all his projects.
+In defending Antony, the Macedonian Proconsul who was condemned, Cicero
+made some unpleasant remarks on the then condition of things. Caesar, we
+are told, when he heard of this, on the very spur of the moment, caused
+Clodius to be accepted as a Plebeian.
+
+In all this we are reminded of the absolute truth of Mommsen's verdict
+on Rome, which I have already quoted more than once: "On the Roman
+oligarchy of this period no judgment can be passed, save one of
+inexorable and remorseless condemnation." How had it come to pass that
+Caesar had the power of suddenly causing an edict to become law, whether
+for good or for evil? Cicero's description of what took place is as
+follows:[241] "About the sixth hour of the day, when I was defending my
+colleague Antony in court, I took occasion to complain of certain things
+which were being done in the Republic, and which I thought to be
+injurious to my poor client. Some dishonest persons carried my words to
+men in power"--meaning Caesar and Pompey--"not, indeed, my own words, but
+words very different from mine. At the ninth hour on that very same day,
+you, Clodius, were accepted as a Plebeian." Caesar, having been given to
+understand that Cicero had been making himself disagreeable, was
+determined not to put up with it. Suetonius tells the same story with
+admirable simplicity. Of Suetonius it must be said that, if he had no
+sympathy for a patriot such as Cicero, neither had he any desire to
+represent in rosy colors the despotism of a Caesar. He tells his stories
+simply as he has heard them. "Cicero," says Suetonius,[242] "having at
+some trial complained of the state of the times, Caesar, on the very same
+day, at the ninth hour, passed Clodius over from the Patrician to the
+Plebeian rank, in accordance with his own desire." How did it come to
+pass that Caesar, who, though Consul at the time, had no recognized power
+of that nature, was efficacious for any such work as this? Because the
+Republic had come to the condition which the German historian has
+described. The conspiracy between Caesar and his subordinates had not
+been made for nothing.
+
+The reader will require to know why Clodius should have desired
+degradation, and how it came to pass that this degradation should have
+been fatal to Cicero. The story has been partly told in the passage from
+Middleton. A Patrician, in accordance with the constitution, could not
+be a Tribune of the people. From the commencement of the Tribunate, that
+office had been reserved for the Plebeians. But a Tribune had a power of
+introducing laws which exceeded that of any Senator or any other
+official. "They had acquired the right," we are told in Smith's
+Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities, "of proposing to the comitia
+tributa, or to the Senate, measures on nearly all the important affairs
+of the State;" and as matters stood at this time, no one Tribune could
+"veto" or put an arbitrary stop to a proposition from another. When such
+proposition was made, it was simply for the people to decide by their
+votes whether it should or should not be law. The present object was to
+have a proposition made and carried suddenly, in reference to Cicero,
+which should have, at any rate, the effect of stopping his mouth. This
+could be best done by a Tribune of the people. No other adequate Tribune
+could be found--no Plebeian so incensed against Cicero as to be willing
+to do this, possessing at the same time power enough to be elected.
+Therefore it was that Clodius was so anxious to be degraded.
+
+No Patrician could become a Tribune of the people; but a Patrician might
+be adopted by a Plebeian, and the adopted child would take the rank of
+his father--would, in fact, for all legal purposes, be the same as a
+son. For doing this in any case a law had to be passed--or, in other
+words, the assent of the people must be obtained and registered. But
+many conditions were necessary. The father intending to adopt must have
+no living son of his own, and must be past the time of life at which he
+might naturally hope to have one; and the adopted son must be of a
+fitting age to personate a son--at any rate, must be younger than the
+father; nothing must be done injurious to either family; there must be
+no trick in it, no looking after other result than that plainly
+intended. All these conditions were broken. The pretended father,
+Fonteius, had a family of his own, and was younger than Clodius. The
+great Claudian family was desecrated, and there was no one so ignorant
+as not to know that the purpose intended was that of entering the
+Tribunate by a fraud. It was required by the general law that the Sacred
+College should report as to the proper observances of the prescribed
+regulations, but no priest was ever consulted. Yet Clodius was adopted,
+made a Plebeian, and in the course of the year elected as Tribune.
+
+In reading all this, the reader is mainly struck by the wonderful
+admixture of lawlessness and law-abiding steadfastness. If Caesar, who
+was already becoming a tyrant in his Consulship, chose to make use of
+this means of silencing Cicero, why not force Clodius into the Tribunate
+without so false and degrading a ceremony? But if, as was no doubt the
+case, he was not yet strong enough to ignore the old popular feelings on
+the subject, how was it that he was able to laugh in his sleeve at the
+laws, and to come forth at a moment's notice and cause the people to
+vote, legally or illegally, just as he pleased? It requires no conjurer
+to tell us the reason. The outside hulls and husks remain when the rich
+fruit has gone. It was in seeing this, and yet not quite believing that
+it must be so, that the agony of Cicero's life consisted. There could
+have been no hope for freedom, no hope for the Republic, when Rome had
+been governed as it was during the Consulship of Caesar; but Cicero could
+still hope, though faintly, and still buoy himself up with remembrances
+of his own year of office.
+
+In carrying on the story of the newly-adopted child to his election as
+Tribune, I have gone beyond the time of my narration, so that the reader
+may understand the cause and nature and effect of the anger which
+Clodius entertained for Cicero. This originated in the bitter words
+spoken as to the profanation of the Bona Dea, and led to the means for
+achieving Cicero's exile and other untoward passages of his life. In the
+year 60 B.C., when Metellus Celer and Afranius were Consuls, Clodius was
+tried for insulting the Bona Dea, and the since so-called Triumvirate
+was instituted. It has already been shown that Cicero, not without many
+doubts, rejected the first offers which were made to him to join the
+forces that were so united. He seems to have passed the greater portion
+of this year in Rome. One letter only was written from the country, to
+Atticus, from his Tusculan villa, and that is of no special moment. He
+spent his time in the city, still engaged in the politics of the day; as
+to which, though he dreaded the coming together of Caesar and Pompey and
+Crassus--those "graves principum amicitias" which were to become so
+detrimental to all who were concerned in them--he foresaw as yet but
+little of the evil which was to fall upon his own head. He was by no
+means idle as to literature, though we have but little of what he wrote,
+and do not regret what we have lost. He composed a memoir of his
+Consulate in Greek, which he sent to Atticus with an allusion to his own
+use of the foreign language intended to show that he is quite at ease in
+that matter. Atticus had sent him a memoir, also written in Greek, on
+the same subject, and the two packets had crossed each other on the
+road. He candidly tells Atticus that his attempt seems to be "horridula
+atque incompta," rough and unpolished; whereas Posidonius, the great
+Greek critic of Rhodes who had been invited by him, Cicero, to read the
+memoir, and then himself to treat the same subject, had replied that he
+was altogether debarred from such an attempt by the excellence of his
+correspondent's performance.[244] He also wrote three books of a poem on
+his Consulate, and sent them to Atticus; of which we have a fragment of
+seventy-five lines quoted by himself,[243] and four or five other lines
+including that unfortunate verse handed down by Quintilian, "O
+fortunatum natam me consule Romam"--unless, indeed, it be spurious, as
+is suggested by that excellent critic and whole-hearted friend of the
+orator's, M. Gueroult. Previous to these he had produced in hexameters,
+also, a translation of the Prognostics of Aratus. This is the second
+part of a poem on the heavenly bodies, the first part, the Phaenomena,
+having been turned into Latin verse by him when he was eighteen. Of the
+Prognostics we have only a few lines preserved by Priscian, and a
+passage repeated by the author, also in his De Divinatione. I think that
+Cicero was capable of producing a poem quite worthy of preservation; but
+in the work of this year the subjects chosen were not alluring.
+
+[Sidenote: B.C. 60, aetat. 47.]
+
+Among his epistles of the year there is one which might of itself have
+sufficed to bring down his name to posterity. This is a long letter,
+full of advice, to his brother Quintus, who had gone out in the previous
+year to govern the province of Asia as Propraetor. We may say that good
+advice could never have been more wanted, and that better advice could
+not have been given. It has been suggested that it was written as a
+companion to that treatise on the duties of a candidate which Quintus
+composed for his brother's service when standing for his Consulship. But
+I cannot admit the analogy. The composition attributed to Quintus
+contained lessons of advice equally suitable to any candidate, sprung
+from the people, striving to rise to high honors in the State. This
+letter is adapted not only to the special position of Quintus, but to
+the peculiarities of his character, and its strength lies in this: that
+while the one brother praises the other, justly praises him, as I
+believe, for many virtues, so as to make the receipt of it acceptable,
+it points out faults--faults which will become fatal, if not amended--in
+language which is not only strong but unanswerable.
+
+The style of this letter is undoubtedly very different from that of
+Cicero's letters generally--so as to suggest to the reader that it must
+have been composed expressly for publication whereas the daily
+correspondence is written "currente calamo," with no other than the
+immediate idea of amusing, instructing, or perhaps comforting the
+correspondent. Hence has come the comparison between this and the
+treatise De Petitione Consulatus. I think that the gravity of the
+occasion, rather than any regard for posterity, produced the change of
+style. Cicero found it to be essential to induce his brother to remain
+at his post, not to throw up his government in disgust, and so to bear
+himself that he should not make himself absolutely odious to his own
+staff and to other Romans around him; for Quintus Cicero, though he had
+been proud and arrogant and ill tempered, had not made himself notorious
+by the ordinary Roman propensity to plunder his province "What is it
+that is required of you as a governor?"[245] asks Cicero. "That men
+should not be frightened by your journeys hither and thither--that they
+should not be eaten up by your extravagance--that they should not be
+disturbed by your coming among them--that there should be joy at your
+approach; when each city should think that its guardian angel, not a
+cruel master, had come upon it--when each house should feel that it
+entertained not a robber but a friend. Practice has made you perfect in
+this. But it is not enough that you should exercise those good offices
+yourself, but that you should take care that every one of those who come
+with you should seem to do his best for the inhabitants of the province,
+for the citizen of Rome, and for the Republic." I wish that I could give
+the letter entire--both in English, that all readers might know how
+grand are the precepts taught, and in Latin, that they who understand
+the language might appreciate the beauty of the words--but I do not dare
+to fill my pages at such length. A little farther on he gives his idea
+of the duty of all those who have power over others--even over the dumb
+animals.[246] "To me it seems that the duty of those in authority over
+others consists in making those who are under them as happy as the
+nature of things will allow. Every one knows that you have acted on this
+principle since you first went to Asia." This, I fear, must be taken as
+flattery, intended to gild the pill which comes afterward "This is not
+only his duty who has under him allies and citizens, but is also that of
+the man who has slaves under his control, and even dumb cattle, that he
+should study the welfare of all over whom he stands in the position of
+master!" Let the reader look into this, and ask himself what precepts of
+Christianity have ever surpassed it.
+
+Then he points out that which he describes as the one great difficulty
+in the career of a Roman Provincial Governor.[247] The collectors of
+taxes, or "publicani," were of the equestrian order. This business of
+farming the taxes had been their rich privilege for at any rate more
+than a century, and as Cicero says, farther on in his letter, it was
+impossible not to know with what hardship the Greek allies would be
+treated by them when so many stories were current of their cruelty even
+in Italy. Were Quintus to take a part against these tax-gatherers, he
+would make them hostile not only to the Republic but to himself also,
+and also to his brother Marcus; for they were of the equestrian order,
+and specially connected with these "publicani" by family ties. He
+implies, as he goes on, that it will be easier to teach the Greeks to be
+submissive than the tax-gatherers to be moderate. After all, where would
+the Greeks of Asia be if they had no Roman master to afford them
+protection? He leaves the matter in the hands of his brother, with
+advice that he should do the best he can on one side and on the other.
+If possible, let the greed of the "publicani" be restrained; but let the
+ally be taught to understand that there may be usage in the world worse
+even than Roman taxation. It would be hardly worth our while to allude
+to this part of Cicero's advice, did it not give an insight into the
+mode in which Rome taxed her subject people.
+
+After this he commences that portion of the letter for the sake of which
+we cannot but believe that the whole was written. "There is one thing,"
+he says, "which I will never cease to din into your ears, because I
+could not endure to think that, amid the praises which are lavished on
+you, there should be any matter in which you should be found wanting.
+All who come to us here"--all who come to Rome from Asia, that is--"when
+they tell us of your honesty and goodness of heart, tell us also that
+you fail in temper. It is a vice which, in the daily affairs of private
+life, betokens a weak and unmanly spirit; but there can be nothing so
+poor as the exhibition of the littleness of nature in those who have
+risen to the dignity of command." He will not, he goes on to say,
+trouble his brother with repeating all that the wise men have said on
+the subject of anger; he is sure that Quintus is well acquainted with
+all that. But is it not a pity, when all men say that nothing could be
+pleasanter than Quintus Cicero when in a good-humor, the same Quintus
+should allow himself to be so provoked that his want of kindly manners
+should be regretted by all around him? "I cannot assert," he goes on to
+say, "that when nature has produced a certain condition of mind, and
+that years as they run on have strengthened it, a man can change all
+that and pluck out from his very self the habits that have grown within
+him; yet I must tell you that if you cannot eschew this evil
+altogether--if you cannot protect yourself against the feeling of anger,
+yet you should prepare yourself to be ready for it when it comes, so
+that, when your very soul within you is hot with it, your tongue, at any
+rate, may be restrained." Then toward the end of the letter there is a
+fraternal exhortation which is surely very fine: "Since chance has
+thrown into my way the duties of official life in Rome, and into yours
+that of administrating provincial government, if I, in the performance
+of my work, have been second to none, do you see that you in yours may
+be equally efficient." How grand, from an elder brother to a younger!
+"And remember this, that you and I have not to strive after some
+excellence still unattained, but have to be on our watch to guard that
+which has been already won. If I should find myself in anything divided
+from you, I should desire no further advance in life. Unless your deeds
+and your words go on all-fours with mine, I should feel that I had
+achieved nothing by all the work and all the dangers which you and I
+have encountered together." The brother at last was found to be a poor,
+envious, ill-conditioned creature--intellectually gifted, and capable of
+borrowing something from his brother's nobler nature; but when struggles
+came, and political feuds, and the need of looking about to see on which
+side safety lay, ready to sacrifice his brother for the sake of safety.
+But up to this time Marcus was prepared to believe all good of Quintus;
+and having made for himself and for the family a great name, was
+desirous of sharing it with his brother, and, as we shall afterward see,
+with his brother's son, and with his own. In this he failed. He lived to
+know that he had failed as regarded his brother and his nephew. It was
+not, however, added to his misery to live to learn how little his son
+was to do to maintain the honor of his family.
+
+I find a note scribbled by myself some years ago in a volume in which I
+had read this epistle, "Probably the most beautiful letter ever
+written." Reading it again subsequently, I added another note, "The
+language altogether different from that of his ordinary letters." I do
+not dissent now either from the enthusiastic praise or the more careful
+criticism. The letter was from the man's heart--true, affectionate, and
+full of anxious, brotherly duty--but written in studied language,
+befitting, as Cicero thought, the need and the dignity of the occasion.
+
+[Sidenote: B.C. 59, aetat. 48.]
+
+The year following was that of Caesar's first Consulship, which he held
+in conjunction with Bibulus, a man who was altogether opposed to him in
+thought, in character, and in action. So hostile were these two great
+officers to each other that the one attempted to undo whatever the other
+did. Bibulus was elected by bribery, on behalf of the Senate, in order
+that he might be a counterpoise to Caesar. But Caesar now was not only
+Caesar: he was Caesar, Pompey, and Crassus united, with all their
+dependents, all their clients, all their greedy hangers-on. To give this
+compact something of the strength of family union, Pompey, who was now
+nearly fifty years of age, took in marriage Caesar's daughter Julia, who
+was a quarter of a century his junior. But Pompey was a man who could
+endear himself to women, and the opinion seems to be general that had
+not Julia died in childbirth the friendship between the men would have
+been more lasting. But for Caesar's purposes the duration of this year
+and the next was enough. Bibulus was a laughing-stock, the mere shadow
+of a Consul, when opposed to such an enemy. He tried to use all the old
+forms of the Republic with the object of stopping Caesar in his career;
+but Caesar only ridiculed him; and Pompey, though we can imagine that he
+did not laugh much, did as Caesar would have him. Bibulus was an augur,
+and observed the heavens when political man[oe]uvres were going on which
+he wished to stop. This was the old Roman system for using religion as a
+drag upon progressive movements. No work of state could be carried on if
+the heavens were declared to be unpropitious; and an augur could always
+say that the heavens were unpropitious if he pleased. This was the
+recognized constitutional mode of obstruction, and was quite in accord
+with the feelings of the people. Pompey alone, or Crassus with him,
+would certainly have submitted to an augur; but Caesar was above augurs.
+Whatever he chose to have carried he carried, with what approach he
+could to constitutional usage, but with whatever departure from
+constitutional usage he found to be necessary.
+
+What was the condition of the people of Rome at the time it is difficult
+to learn from the conflicting statements of historians. That Cicero had
+till lately been popular we know. We are told that Bibulus was popular
+when he opposed Caesar. Of personal popularity up to this time I doubt
+whether Caesar had achieved much. Yet we learn that, when Bibulus with
+Cato and Lucullus endeavored to carry out their constitutional threats,
+they were dragged and knocked about, and one of them nearly killed. Of
+the illegality of Caesar's proceedings there can be no doubt. "The
+tribunitian veto was interposed; Caesar contented himself with
+disregarding it."[248] This is quoted from the German historian, who
+intends to leave an impression that Caesar was great and wise in all that
+he did; and who tells us also of the "obstinate, weak creature Bibulus,"
+and of "the dogmatical fool Cato." I doubt whether there was anything of
+true popular ferment, or that there was any commotion except that which
+was made by the "roughs" who had attached themselves for pay to Caesar or
+to Pompey, or to Crassus, or, as it might be, to Bibulus and the other
+leaders. The violence did not amount to more than "nearly" killing this
+man or the other. Some Roman street fights were no doubt more bloody--as
+for instance that in which, seven years afterward, Clodius was
+slaughtered by Milo--but the blood was made to flow, not by the people,
+but by hired bravoes. The Roman citizens of the day were, I think, very
+quiescent. Neither pride nor misery stirred them much. Caesar, perceiving
+this, was aware that he might disregard Bibulus and his auguries so long
+as he had a band of ruffians around him sufficient for the purposes of
+the hour. It was in order that he might thus prevail that the coalition
+had been made with Pompey and Crassus. His colleague Bibulus, seeing how
+matters were going, retired to his own house, and there went through a
+farce of consular enactments. Caesar carried all his purposes, and the
+people were content to laugh, dividing him into two personages, and
+talking of Julius and Caesar as the two Consuls of the year. It was in
+this way that he procured to be allotted to him by the people his
+irregular command in Gaul. He was to be Proconsul, not for one year,
+with perhaps a prolongation for two or three, but for an established
+period of five. He was to have the great province of Cisalpine
+Gaul--that is to say, the whole of what we now call Italy, from the foot
+of the Alps down to a line running from sea to sea just north of
+Florence. To this Transalpine Gaul was afterward added. The province so
+named, possessed at the time by the Romans, was called "Narbonensis," a
+country comparatively insignificant, running from the Alps to the
+Pyrenees along the Mediterranean. The Gaul or Gallia of which Caesar
+speaks when, in the opening words of his Commentary, he tells us that it
+was divided into three parts, was altogether beyond the Roman province
+which was assigned to him. Caesar, when he undertook his government, can
+hardly have dreamed of subjecting to Roman rule the vast territories
+which were then known as Gallia, beyond the frontiers of the Empire, and
+which we now call France.
+
+But he caused himself to be supported by an enormous army. There were
+stationed three legions on the Italian side of the Alps, and one on the
+other. These were all to be under his command for five years certain,
+and amounted to a force of not less than thirty thousand men. "As no
+troops could constitutionally be stationed in Italy proper, the
+commander of the legions of Northern Italy and Gaul," says Mommsen,
+"dominated at the same time Italy and Rome for the next five years; and
+he who was master for five years was master for life."[249]
+
+[Sidenote: B.C. 59, aetat. 48.]
+
+Such was the condition of Rome during the second year of the
+Triumvirate, in which Caesar was Consul and prepared the way for the
+powers which he afterward exercised. Cicero would not come to his call;
+and therefore, as we are told, Clodius was let loose upon him. As he
+would not come to Caesar's call, it was necessary that he should be
+suppressed, and Clodius, notwithstanding all constitutional
+difficulties--nay, impossibilities--was made Tribune of the people.
+Things had now so far advanced with a Caesar that a Cicero who would not
+come to his call must be disposed of after some fashion.
+
+Till we have thought much of it, often of it, till we have looked
+thoroughly into it, we find ourselves tempted to marvel at Cicero's
+blindness. Surely a man so gifted must have known enough of the state of
+Rome to have been aware that there was no room left for one honest,
+patriotic, constitutional politician. Was it not plain to him that if,
+"natus ad justitiam," he could not bring himself to serve with those who
+were intent on discarding the Republic, he had better retire among his
+books, his busts, and his literary luxuries, and leave the government of
+the country to those who understood its people? And we are the more
+prone to say and to think all this because the man himself continually
+said it, and continually thought it. In one of the letters written early
+in the year[250] to Atticus from his villa at Antium he declares very
+plainly how it is with him; and this, too, in a letter written in
+good-humor, not in a despondent frame of mind, in which he is able
+pleasantly to ridicule his enemy Clodius, who it seems had expressed a
+wish to go on an embassy to Tigranes, King of Armenia. "Do not think,"
+he says, "that I am complaining of all this because I myself am desirous
+of being engaged in public affairs. Even while it was mine to sit at the
+helm I was tired of the work; but now, when I am in truth driven out of
+the ship, when the rudder has not been thrown down but seized out of my
+hands, how should I take a pleasure in looking from the shore at the
+wrecks which these other pilots have made?" But the study of human
+nature tells us, and all experience, that men are unable to fathom their
+own desires, and fail to govern themselves by the wisdom which is at
+their fingers' ends. The retiring Prime-minister cannot but hanker after
+the seals and the ribbons and the titles of office, even though his soul
+be able to rise above considerations of emolument, and there will creep
+into a man's mind an idea that, though reform of abuses from other
+sources may be impossible, if he were there once more the evil could at
+least be mitigated, might possibly be cured. So it was during this
+period of his life with Cicero. He did believe that political justice
+exercised by himself, with such assistance as his eloquence would obtain
+for it, might be efficacious for preserving the Republic, in spite of
+Caesar, and of Pompey, and of Crassus. He did not yet believe that these
+men would consent to such an outrage as his banishment. It must have
+been incredible to him that Pompey should assent to it. When the blow
+came, it crushed him for the time. But he retricked his beams and
+struggled on to the end, as we shall see if we follow his life to the
+close.
+
+Such was the intended purpose of the degradation of Clodius. This,
+however, was not at once declared. It was said that Clodius as Tribune
+intended rather to oppose Caesar than to assist him. He at any rate chose
+that Cicero should so believe and sent Curio, a young man to whom Cicero
+was attached, to visit the orator at his villa at Antium and to declare
+these friendly purposes. According to the story told by Cicero,[251]
+Clodius was prepared to oppose the Triumvirate; and the other young men
+of Rome, the _jeunesse doree_, of which both Curio and Clodius were
+members, were said to be equally hostile to Caesar, Pompey, and Crassus,
+whose doings in opposition to the constitution were already evident
+enough; so that it suited Cicero to believe that the rising aristocracy
+of Rome would oppose them. But the aristocracy of Rome, whether old or
+young, cared for nothing but its fish-ponds and its amusements.
+
+Cicero spent the earlier part of the year out of Rome, among his various
+villas--at Tusculanum, at Antium, and at Formiae. The purport of all his
+letters at this period is the same--to complain of the condition of the
+Republic, and especially of the treachery of his friend Pompey. Though
+there be much of despondency in his tone, there is enough also of high
+spirit to make us feel that his literary aspirations are not out of
+place, though mingled with his political wailing. The time will soon
+come when his trust even in literature will fail him for a while.
+
+Early in the year he declares that he would like to accept a mission to
+Egypt, offered to him by Caesar and Pompey, partly in order that he might
+for a while be quit of Rome, and partly that Romans might feel how ill
+they could do without him. He then uses for the first time, as far as I
+am aware, a line from the Iliad,[252] which is repeated by him again and
+again, in part or in whole, to signify the restraint which is placed on
+him by his own high character among his fellow-citizens. "I would go to
+Egypt on this pleasant excursion, but that I fear what the men of Troy,
+and the Trojan women, with their wide-sweeping robes, would say of me."
+And what, he asks, would the men of our party, "the optimates," say? and
+what would Cato say, whose opinion is more to me than that of them all?
+And how would history tell the story in future ages? But he would like
+to go to Egypt, and he will wait and see. Then, after various questions
+to Atticus, comes that great one as to the augurship, of which so much
+has been made by Cicero's enemies, "quo quidem uno ego ab istis capi
+possim." A few lines above he had been speaking of another lure, that of
+the mission to Egypt. He discusses that with his friend, and then goes
+on in his half-joking phrase, "but this would have been the real thing
+to catch me." Nothing caught him. He was steadfast all through,
+accepting no offer of place from the conspirators by which his integrity
+or his honor could be soiled. That it was so was well known to history
+in the time of Quintilian, whose testimony as to the "repudiatus
+vigintiviratus"--his refusal of a place among the twenty
+commissioners--has been already quoted.[253] And yet biographers have
+written of him as of one willing to sell his honor, his opinions, and
+the commonwealth, for a "pitiful bribe;" not that he did do so, not that
+he attempted to do it, but because in a half-joking letter to the friend
+of his bosom he tells his friend which way his tastes lay![254]
+
+He had been thinking of writing a book on geography, and consulted
+Atticus on the subject; but in one of his letters he tells his friend
+that he had abandoned the idea. The subject was too dull; and if he took
+one side in a dispute that was existing, he would be sure to fall under
+the lash of the critics on the other. He is enjoying his leisure at
+Antium, and thinks it a much better place than Rome. If the weather will
+not let him catch fish, at any rate he can count the waves. In all these
+letters Cicero asks questions about his money and his private affairs;
+about the mending of a wall, perhaps, and adds something about his wife
+or daughter or son. He is going from Antium to Formiae, but must return
+to Antium by a certain date because Tullia wants to see the games.
+
+Then again he alludes to Clodius. Pompey had made a compact with
+Clodius--so at least Cicero had heard--that he, Clodius, if elected for
+the Tribunate, would do nothing to injure Cicero. The assurance of such
+a compact had no doubt been spread about for the quieting of Cicero; but
+no such compact had been intended to be kept, unless Cicero would be
+amenable, would take some of the good things offered to him, or at any
+rate hold his peace. But Cicero affects to hope that no such agreement
+may be kept. He is always nicknaming Pompey, who during his Eastern
+campaign had taken Jerusalem, and who now parodies the Africanus, the
+Asiaticus, and the Macedonicus of the Scipios and Metelluses. "If that
+Hierosolymarian candidate for popularity does not keep his word with me,
+I shall be delighted. If that be his return for my speeches on his
+behalf"--the Anteponatur omnibus Pompeius, for instance--"I will play
+him such a turn of another kind that he shall remember it."[255]
+
+He begins to know what the "Triumvirate" is doing with the Republic, but
+has not yet brought himself to suspect the blow that is to fall on
+himself. "They are going along very gayly," he says, "and do not make as
+much noise as one would have expected."[256] If Cato had been more on
+the alert, things would not have gone so quickly; but the dishonesty of
+others, who have allowed all the laws to be ignored, has been worse than
+Cato. If we used to feel that the Senate took too much on itself, what
+shall we say when that power has been transferred, not to the people,
+but to three utterly unscrupulous men? "They can make whom they will
+Consuls, whom they will Tribunes--so that they may hide the very goitre
+of Vatinius under a priest's robe." For himself, Cicero says, he will be
+contented to remain with his books, if only Clodius will allow him; if
+not, he will defend himself.[257] As for his country, he has done more
+for his country than has even been desired of him; and he thinks it to
+be better to leave the helm in the hands of pilots, however incompetent,
+than himself to steer when passengers are so thankless. Then we find
+that he robs poor Tullia of her promised pleasure at the games, because
+it will be beneath his dignity to appear at them. He is always very
+anxious for his friend's letters, depending on them for news and for
+amusement. "My messenger will return at once," he says, in one;
+"therefore, though you are coming yourself very soon, send me a heavy
+letter, full not only of news but of your own ideas."[258] In another:
+"Cicero the Little sends greeting," he says, in Greek, "to Titus the
+Athenian"--that is, to Titus Pomponius Atticus. The Greek letters were
+probably traced by the child at his father's knee as Cicero held the pen
+or the stylus. In another letter he declares that there, at Formiae,
+Pompey's name of Magnus is no more esteemed than that of Dives belonging
+to Crassus. In the next he calls Pompey Sampsiceramus. We learn from
+Josephus that there was a lady afterward in the East in the time of
+Vitellius, who was daughter of Sampsigeramus, King of the Emesi. It
+might probably be a royal family name.[259] In choosing the absurd
+title, he is again laughing at his party leader. Pompey had probably
+boasted of his doings with the Sampsiceramus of the day and the priests
+of Jerusalem. "When this Sampsiceramus of ours finds how ill he is
+spoken of, he will rush headlong into revolution." He complains that he
+can do nothing at Formiae because of the visitors. No English poet was
+ever so interviewed by American admirers. They came at all hours, in
+numbers sufficient to fill a temple, let alone a gentleman's house. How
+can he write anything requiring leisure in such a condition as this?
+Nevertheless he will attempt something. He goes on criticising all that
+is done in Rome, especially what is done by Pompey, who no doubt was
+vacillating sadly between Caesar, to whom he was bound, and Bibulus, the
+other Consul, to whom he ought to have been bound, as being naturally on
+the aristocratic side. He cannot for a moment keep his pen from public
+matters; nor, on the other hand, can he refrain from declaring that he
+will apply himself wholly, undividedly, to his literature. "Therefore,
+oh my Titus, let me settle down to these glorious occupations, and
+return to that which, if I had been wise, I never should have
+left."[260] A day or two afterward, writing from the same place, he asks
+what Arabarches is saying of him. Arabarches is another name for
+Pompey--this Arabian chieftain.
+
+In the early summer of this year Cicero returned to Rome, probably in
+time to see Atticus, who was then about to leave the city for his
+estates in Epirus. We have a letter written by him to his friend on the
+journey, telling us that Caesar had made him two distinct offers,
+evidently with the view of getting rid of him, but in such a manner as
+would be gratifying to Cicero himself.[261] Caesar asks him to go with
+him to Gaul as his lieutenant, or, if that will not suit him, to accept
+a "free legation for the sake of paying a vow." This latter was a kind
+of job by which Roman Senators got themselves sent forth on their
+private travels with all the appanages of a Senator travelling on public
+business. We have his argument as to both. Elsewhere he objects to a
+"libera legatio" as being a job.[262] Here he only points out that,
+though it enforce his absence from Rome at a time disagreeable to
+him--just when his brother Quintus would return--it would not give him
+the protection which he needs. Though he were travelling about the world
+as a Senator on some pretended embassy, he would still be open to the
+attacks of Clodius. He would necessarily be absent, or he would not be
+in enjoyment of his privilege, but by his very absence he would find his
+position weakened; whereas, as Caesar's appointed lieutenant, he need not
+leave the city at once, and in that position he would be quite safe
+against all that Clodius or other enemies could do to him.[263] No
+indictment could be made against a Roman while he was in the employment
+of the State. It must be remembered, too, on judging of these overtures,
+that both the one and the other--and indeed all the offers then made to
+him--were deemed to be highly honorable, as Rome then existed. "The free
+legation"--the "libera legatio voti causa"--had no reference to parties.
+It was a job, no doubt, and, in the hands of the ordinary Roman
+aristocrat, likely to be very onerous to the provincials among whom the
+privileged Senator might travel; but it entailed no party adhesion. In
+this case it was intended only to guarantee the absence of a man who
+might be troublesome in Rome. The other was the offer of genuine work in
+which politics were not at all concerned. Such a position was accepted
+by Quintus, our Cicero's brother, and in performance of the duties which
+fell to him he incurred terrible danger, having been nearly destroyed by
+the Gauls in his winter quarters among the Nervii. Labienus, who was
+Caesar's right-hand man in Gaul, was of the same politics as Cicero--so
+much so that when Caesar rebelled against the Republic, Labienus, true to
+the Republic, would no longer fight on Caesar's side. It was open to
+Cicero, without disloyalty, to accept the offer made to him; but with an
+insight into what was coming, of which he himself was hardly conscious,
+he could not bring himself to accept offers which in themselves were
+alluring, but which would seem in future times to have implied on his
+part an assent to the breaking up of the Republic. [Greek: Aideomai
+Troas kai Troadas elkesipeplous.] What will be said of me in history by
+my citizens if I now do simply that which may best suit my own
+happiness? Had he done so, Pliny and the others would not have spoken of
+him as they have spoken, and it would not have been worth the while of
+modern lovers of Caesarism to write books against the one patriot of his
+age.
+
+During the remainder of this year, B.C. 59, Cicero was at Rome, and
+seems gradually to have become aware that a personal attack was to be
+made upon him. At the close of a long and remarkable letter written to
+his brother Quintus in November, he explains the state of his own mind,
+showing us, who have now before us the future which was hidden from him,
+how greatly mistaken he was as to the results which were to be expected.
+He had been telling his brother how nearly Cato had been murdered for
+calling Pompey, in public, a Dictator. Then he goes on to describe his
+own condition.[264] "You may see from this what is the state of the
+Republic. As far as I am concerned, it seems that friends will not be
+wanting to defend me. They offer themselves in a wonderful way, and
+promise assistance. I feel great hope and still greater spirit--hope,
+which tells me that we shall be victors in the struggle; spirit, which
+bids me fear no casualty in the present state of public affairs."[265]
+But the matter stands in this way: "If he"--that is, Clodius--"should
+indict me in court, all Italy would come to my defence, so that I should
+be acquitted with honor. Should he attack me with open violence, I
+should have, I think, not only my own party but the world at large to
+stand by me. All men promise me their friends, their clients, their
+freedmen, their slaves, and even their money. Our old body of
+aristocrats"--Cato, Bibulus, and the makers of fish-ponds
+generally--"are wonderfully warm in my cause. If any of these have
+heretofore been remiss, now they join our party from sheer hatred of
+these kings"--the Triumvirs. "Pompey promises everything, and so does
+Caesar, whom I only trust so far as I can see them." Even the Triumvirs
+promise him that he will be safe; but his belief in Pompey's honesty is
+all but gone. "The coming Tribunes are my friends. The Consuls of next
+year promise well." He was wofully mistaken. "We have excellent Praetors,
+citizens alive to their duty. Domitius, Nigidius, Memmius, and Lentulus
+are specially trustworthy. The others are good men. You may therefore
+pluck up your courage and be confident." From this we perceive that he
+had already formed the idea that he might perhaps be required to fight
+for his position as a Roman citizen; and it seems also that he
+understood the cause of the coming conflict. The intention was that he
+should be driven out of Rome by personal enmity. Nothing is said in any
+of these letters of the excuse to be used, though he knew well what that
+excuse was to be. He was to be charged by the Patrician Tribune with
+having put Roman citizens to death in opposition to the law. But there
+arises at this time no question whether he had or had not been justified
+in what he, as Consul, had done to Lentulus and the others. Would
+Clodius be able to rouse a mob against him? and, if so, would Caesar
+assist Clodius? or would Pompey who still loomed to his eyes as the
+larger of the two men? He had ever been the friend of Pompey, and Pompey
+had promised him all manner of assistance; but he knew already that
+Pompey would turn upon him. That Rome should turn upon him--Rome which
+he had preserved from the torches of Catiline's conspirators--that he
+could not bring himself to believe!
+
+We must not pass over this long letter to Quintus without observing that
+through it all the evil condition of the younger brother's mind becomes
+apparent. The severity of his administration had given offence. His
+punishments had been cruel. His letters had been rash, and his language
+violent. In short, we gather from the brother's testimony that Quintus
+Cicero was very ill-fitted to be the civil governor of a province.
+
+The only work which we have from Cicero belonging to this year, except
+his letters, is the speech, or part of the speech, he made for Lucius
+Valerius Flaccus. Flaccus had been Praetor when Cicero was Consul, and
+had done good service, in the eyes of his superior officers, in the
+matter of the Catiline conspiracy. He had then gone to Asia as governor,
+and, after the Roman manner, had fleeced the province. That this was so
+there is no doubt. After his return he was accused, was defended by
+Cicero, and was acquitted. Macrobius tells us that Cicero, by the
+happiness of a bon-mot, brought the accused off safely, though he was
+manifestly guilty. He adds also that Cicero took care not to allow the
+joke to appear in the published edition of his speech.[266] There are
+parts of the speech which have been preserved, and are sufficiently
+amusing even to us. He is very hard upon the Greeks of Asia, the class
+from which the witnesses against Flaccus were taken. We know here in
+England that a spaniel, a wife, and a walnut-tree may be beaten with
+advantage. Cicero says that in Asia there is a proverb that a Phrygian
+may be improved in the same way. "Fiat experimentum in corpore vili." It
+is declared through Asia that you should take a Carian for your
+experiment. The "last of the Mysians" is the well-known Asiatic term for
+the lowest type of humanity. Look through all the comedies, you will
+find the leading slave is a Lydian. Then he turns to these poor
+Asiatics, and asks them whether any one can be expected to think well of
+them, when such is their own testimony of themselves! He attacks the
+Jew, and speaks of the Jewish religion as a superstition worthy in
+itself of no consideration. Pompey had spared the gold in the Temple of
+Jerusalem, because he thought it wise to respect the religious
+prejudices of the people; but the gods themselves had shown, by
+subjecting the Jews to the Romans, how little the gods had regarded
+these idolatrous worshippers! Such were the arguments used; and they
+prevailed with the judges--or jury, we should rather call them--to whom
+they were addressed.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII.
+
+_HIS EXILE._
+
+
+We now come to that period of Cicero's life in which, by common consent
+of all who have hitherto written of him, he is supposed to have shown
+himself as least worthy of his high name. Middleton, who certainly loved
+his hero's memory and was always anxious to do him justice, condemns
+him. "It cannot be denied that in this calamity of his exile he did not
+behave himself with that firmness which might reasonably be expected
+from one who had borne so glorious a part in the Republic." Morabin, the
+French biographer, speaks of the wailings of his grief, of its injustice
+and its follies. "Ciceron etait trop plein de son malheur pour donner
+entree a de nouvelles esperances," he says. "Il avait supporte ce
+malheur avec peu de courage," says another Frenchman, M. Du Rozoir, in
+introducing us to the speeches which Cicero made on his return. Dean
+Merivale declares that "he marred the grace of the concession in the
+eyes of posterity"--alluding to the concession made to popular feeling
+by his voluntary departure from Rome, as will hereafter be
+described--"by the unmanly lamentations with which he accompanied it."
+Mommsen, with a want of insight into character wonderful in an author
+who has so closely studied the history of the period, speaks of his
+exile as a punishment inflicted on a "man notoriously timid, and
+belonging to the class of political weather-cocks." "We now come," says
+Mr. Forsyth, "to the most melancholy period of Cicero's life, melancholy
+not so much from its nature and the extent of the misfortunes which
+overtook him, as from the abject prostration of mind into which he was
+thrown." Mr. Froude, as might be expected, uses language stronger than
+that of others, and tells us that "he retired to Macedonia to pour out
+his sorrows and his resentments in lamentations unworthy of a woman." We
+have to admit that modern historians and biographers have been united in
+accusing Cicero of want of manliness during his exile. I propose--not,
+indeed, to wash the blackamoor white--but to show, if I can, that he was
+as white as others might be expected to have been in similar
+circumstances.
+
+We are, I think, somewhat proud of the courage shown by public men of
+our country who have suffered either justly or unjustly under the laws.
+Our annals are bloody, and many such have had to meet their death. They
+have done so generally with becoming manliness. Even though they may
+have been rebels against the powers of the day, their memories have been
+made green because they have fallen like brave men. Sir Thomas More, who
+was no rebel, died well, and crowned a good life by his manner of
+leaving it. Thomas Cromwell submitted to the axe without a complaint.
+Lady Jane Grey, when on the scaffold, yielded nothing in manliness to
+the others. Cranmer and the martyr bishops perished nobly. The Earl of
+Essex, and Raleigh, and Strafford, and Strafford's master showed no fear
+when the fatal moment came. In reading the fate of each, we sympathize
+with the victim because of a certain dignity at the moment of death. But
+there is, I think, no crisis of life in which it is so easy for a man to
+carry himself honorably as that in which he has to leave it. "Venit
+summa dies et ineluctabile tempus." No doubting now can be of avail. No
+moment is left for the display of conduct beyond this, which requires
+only decorum and a free use of the pulses to become in some degree
+glorious. The wretch from the lowest dregs of the people can achieve it
+with a halter round his neck. Cicero had that moment also to face; and
+when it came he was as brave as the best Englishman of them all. But of
+those I have named no one had an Atticus to whom it had been the
+privilege of his life to open his very soul, in language so charming as
+to make it worth posterity's while to read it, to study it, to sift it,
+and to criticise it. Wolsey made many plaints in his misery, but they
+have reached us in such forms of grace that they do not disparage him;
+but then he too had no Atticus. Shaftesbury and Bolingbroke were
+dismissed ministers and doomed to live in exile, the latter for many
+years, and felt, no doubt, strongly their removal from the glare of
+public life to obscurity. We hear no complaint from them which can
+justify some future critic in saying that their wails were unworthy of a
+woman; but neither of them was capable of telling an Atticus the
+thoughts of his mind as they rose. What other public man ever had an
+Atticus to whom, in the sorrows which the ingratitude of friends had
+brought upon him, he could disclose every throb of his heart?
+
+I think that we are often at a loss, in our efforts at appreciation of
+character, and in the expressions of our opinion respecting it, to
+realize the meaning of courage and manliness. That sententious Swedish
+Queen, one of whose foolish maxims I have quoted, has said that Cicero,
+though a coward, was capable of great actions, because she did not know
+what a coward was. To doubt--to tremble with anxiety--to vacillate
+hither and thither between this course and the other as to which may be
+the better--to complain within one's own breast that this or that thing
+has been an injustice--to hesitate within one's self, not quite knowing
+which way honor may require us to go--to be indignant even at fancied
+wrongs--to rise in wrath against another, and then, before the hour has
+passed, to turn that wrath against one's self--that is not to be a
+coward. To know what duty requires, and then to be deterred by fear of
+results--that is to be a coward; but the man of many scruples may be the
+greatest hero of them all. Let the law of things be declared clearly so
+that the doubting mind shall no longer doubt, so that scruples may be
+laid at rest, so that the sense of justice may be satisfied--and he of
+whom I speak shall be ready to meet the world in arms against him. There
+are men, very useful in their way, who shall never doubt at all, but
+shall be ready, as the bull is ready, to encounter any obstacles that
+there may be before them. I will not say but that for the coarse
+purposes of the world they may not be the most efficacious, but I will
+not admit that they are therefore the bravest. The bull, who has no
+imagination to tell him what the obstacle may do to him, is not brave.
+He is brave who, fully understanding the potentiality of the obstacle,
+shall, for a sufficient purpose, move against it.
+
+This Cicero always did. He braved the murderous anger of Sulla when, as
+a young man, he thought it well to stop the greed of Sulla's minions. He
+trusted himself amid the dangers prepared for him, when it was necessary
+that with extraordinary speed he should get together the evidence needed
+for the prosecution of Verres. He was firm against all that Catiline
+attempted for his destruction, and had courage enough for the
+responsibility when he thought it expedient to doom the friends of
+Catiline to death. In defending Milo, whether the cause were good or
+bad, he did not blench.[267] He joined the Republican army in Macedonia
+though he distrusted Pompey and his companions. When he thought that
+there was a hope for the Republic, he sprung at Antony with all the
+courage of a tigress protecting her young; and when all had failed and
+was rotten around him, when the Republic had so fallen that he knew it
+to be gone--then he was able to give his neck to the swordsman with all
+the apparent indifference of life which was displayed by those
+countrymen of our own whom I have named.
+
+But why did he write so piteously when he was driven into exile? Why, at
+any rate, did he turn upon his chosen friend and scold him, as though
+that friend had not done enough for friendship? Why did he talk of
+suicide as though by that he might find the easiest way of escape?
+
+I hold it to be natural that a man should wail to himself under a sense,
+not simply of misfortune, but of misfortune coming to him from the
+injustice of others, and specially from the ingratitude of friends.
+Afflictions which come to us from natural causes, such as sickness and
+physical pain, or from some chance such as the loss of our money by the
+breaking of a bank, an heroic man will bear without even inward
+complainings. But a sense of wrong done to him by friends will stir him,
+not by the misery inflicted, but because of the injustice; and that
+which he says to himself he will say to his wife, if his wife be to him
+a second self, or to his friend, if he have one so dear to him. The
+testimony by which the writers I have named have been led to treat
+Cicero so severely has been found in the letters which he wrote during
+his exile; and of these letters all but one were addressed either to
+Atticus or to his wife or to his brother.[268] Twenty-seven of them were
+to Atticus. Before he accepted a voluntary exile, as the best solution
+of the difficulty in which he was placed--for it was voluntary at first,
+as will be seen--he applied to the Consul Piso for aid, and for the same
+purpose visited Pompey. So far he was a suppliant, but this he did in
+conformity with Roman usage. In asking favor of a man in power there was
+held to be no disgrace, even though the favor asked were one improper to
+be granted, which was not the case with Cicero. And he went about the
+Forum in mourning--"sordidatus"--as was the custom with men on their
+trial. We cannot doubt that in each of these cases he acted with the
+advice of his friends. His conduct and his words after his return from
+exile betray exultation rather than despondency.
+
+It is from the letters which he wrote to Atticus that he has been
+judged--from words boiling with indignation that such a one as he should
+have been surrendered by the Rome that he had saved, by those friends to
+whom he had been so true to be trampled on by such a one as Clodius!
+When a man has written words intended for the public ear, it is fair
+that he should bear the brunt of them, be it what it may. He has
+intended them for public effect, and if they are used against him he
+should not complain. But here the secret murmurings of the man's soul
+were sent forth to his choicest friend, with no idea that from them
+would he be judged by the "historians to come in 600 years,"[269] of
+whose good word he thought so much. "Quid vero historiae de nobis ad
+annos DC. praedicarint!" he says, to Atticus. How is it that from them,
+after 2000 years, the Merivales, Mommsens, and Froudes condemn their
+great brother in letters whose lightest utterances have been found
+worthy of so long a life! Is there not an injustice in falling upon a
+man's private words, words when written intended only for privacy, and
+making them the basis of an accusation in which an illustrious man shall
+be arraigned forever as a coward? It is said that he was unjust even to
+Atticus, accusing even Atticus of lukewarmness. What if he did so--for
+an hour? Is that an affair of ours? Did Atticus quarrel with him? Let
+any reader of these words who has lived long enough to have an old
+friend, ask himself whether there has never been a moment of anger in
+his heart--of anger of which he has soon learned to recognize the
+injustice? He may not have written his anger, but then, perhaps, he has
+not had the pen of a Cicero. Let those who rebuke the unmanliness of
+Cicero's wailings remember what were his sufferings. The story has yet
+to be told, but I may in rough words describe their nature. Everything
+was to be taken from him: all that he had--his houses, his books, his
+pleasant gardens, his busts and pictures, his wide retinue of slaves,
+and possessions lordly as are those of our dukes and earls. He was
+driven out from Italy and so driven that no place of delight could be
+open to him. Sicily, where he had friends, Athens, where he might have
+lived, were closed against him. He had to look where to live, and did
+live for a while on money borrowed from his friends. All the cherished
+occupations of his life were over for him--the law courts, the Forum,
+the Senate, and the crowded meetings of Roman citizens hanging on his
+words. The circumstances of his exile separated him from his wife and
+children, so that he was alone. All this was assured to him for life, as
+far as Roman law could assure it. Let us think of the condition of some
+great and serviceable Englishman in similar circumstances. Let us
+suppose that Sir Robert Peel had been impeached, and forced by some
+iniquitous sentence to live beyond the pale of civilization: that the
+houses at Whitehall Gardens and at Drayton had been confiscated,
+dismantled, and levelled to the ground, and his rents and revenues made
+over to his enemies; that everything should have been done to destroy
+him by the country he had served, except the act of taking away that
+life which would thus have been made a burden to him. Would not his case
+have been more piteous, a source of more righteous indignation, than
+that even of the Mores or Raleighs? He suffered under invectives in the
+House of Commons, and we sympathized with him; but if some Clodius of
+the day could have done this to him, should we have thought the worse of
+him had he opened his wounds to his wife, or to his brother, or to his
+friend of friends?
+
+Had Cicero put an end to his life in his exile, as he thought of doing,
+he would have been a second Cato to admiring posterity, and some Lucan
+with rolling verses would have told us narratives of his valor. The
+judges of to-day look back to his half-formed purposes in this direction
+as being an added evidence of the weakness of the man; but had he let
+himself blood and have perished in his bath, he would have been thought
+to have escaped from life as honorably as did Junius Brutus It is
+because he dared to live on that we are taught to think so little of
+him,--because he had antedated Christianity so far as to feel when the
+moment came that such an escape was, in truth, unmanly. He doubted, and
+when the deed had not been done he expressed regret that he had allowed
+himself to live. But he did not do it,--as Cato would have done, or
+Brutus.
+
+It may be as well here to combat, in as few words as possible, the
+assertions which have been made that Cicero, having begun life as a
+democrat, discarded his colors as soon as he had received from the
+people those honors for which he had sought popularity. They who have
+said so have taken their idea from the fact that, in much of his early
+forensic work, he spoke against the aristocratic party. He attacked
+Sulla, through his favorite Chrysogonus, in his defence of Roscius
+Amerinus. He afterward defended a woman of Arretium in the spirit of
+antagonism to Sulla. His accusation of Verres was made on the same side
+in politics, and was carried on in opposition to Hortensius and the
+oligarchs. He defended the Tribune Caius Cornelius. Then, when he became
+Consul, he devoted himself to the destruction of Catiline, who was
+joined with many, perhaps with Caesar's sympathy, in the conspiracy for
+the overthrow of the Republic. Caesar soon became the leader of the
+democracy,--became rather what Mommsen describes as "Democracy" itself;
+and as Cicero had defended the Senate from Catiline, and had refused to
+attach himself to Caesar, he is supposed to have turned from the
+political ideas of his youth, and to have become a Conservative when
+Conservative ideas suited his ambition.
+
+I will not accept the excuse put forward on his behalf, that the early
+speeches were made on the side of democracy because the exigencies of
+the occasion required him to so devote his energies as an advocate. No
+doubt he was an advocate, as are our barristers of to-day, and, as an
+advocate, supported this side or that; but we shall be wrong if we
+suppose that the Roman "patronus" supplied his services under such
+inducements. With us a man goes into the profession of the law with the
+intention of making money, and takes the cases right and left, unless
+there be special circumstances which may debar him from doing so with
+honor. It is a point of etiquette with him to give his assistance, in
+turn, as he may be called on; so much so, that leading men are not
+unfrequently employed on one side simply that they may not be employed
+on the other side. It should not be urged on the part of Cicero that, so
+actuated, he defended Amerinus, a case in which he took part against the
+aristocrats, or defended Publius Sulla, in doing which he appeared on
+the side of the aristocracy. Such a defence of his conduct would be
+misleading, and might be confuted. It would be confuted by those who
+suppose him to have been "notoriously a political trimmer," as Mommsen
+has[270] called him; or a "deserter," as he was described by Dio Cassius
+and by the Pseudo-Sallust,[271] by showing that in fact he took up
+causes under the influence of strong personal motives such as rarely
+govern an English barrister. These motives were in many cases partly
+political; but they operated in such a manner as to give no guide to his
+political views. In defending Sulla's nephew he was moved, as far as we
+know, solely by private motives. In defending Amerinus he may be said to
+have attacked Sulla. His object was to stamp out the still burning
+embers of Sulla's cruelty; but not the less was he wedded to Sulla's
+general views as to the restoration of the authority of the Senate. In
+his early speeches, especially in that spoken against Verres, he
+denounces the corruption of the senatorial judges; but at that very
+period of his life he again and again expresses his own belief in the
+glory and majesty of the Senate. In accusing Verres he accused the
+general corruption of Rome's provincial governors; and as they were
+always past-Consuls or past-Praetors, and had been the elite of the
+aristocracy, he may be said so far to have taken the part of a democrat;
+but he had done so only so far as he had found himself bound by a sense
+of duty to put a stop to corruption. The venality of the judges and the
+rapacity of governors had been fit objects for his eloquence; but I deny
+that he can be fairly charged with having tampered with democracy
+because he had thus used his eloquence on behalf of the people.
+
+He was no doubt stirred by other political motives less praiseworthy,
+though submitted to in accordance with the practice and the known usages
+of Rome. He had undertaken to speak for Catiline when Catiline was
+accused of corruption on his return from Africa, knowing that Catiline
+had been guilty. He did not do so; but the intention, for our present
+purpose, is the same as the doing. To have defended Catiline would have
+assisted him in his operations as a candidate for the Consulship.
+Catiline was a bad subject for a defence--as was Fonteius, whom he
+certainly did defend--and Catiline was a democrat. But Cicero, had he
+defended Catiline, would not have done so as holding out his hand to
+democracy. Cicero, when, in the Pro Lege Manilia, he for the first time
+addressed the people, certainly spoke in opposition to the wishes of the
+Senate in proposing that Pompey should have the command of the
+Mithridatic war; but his views were not democratic. It has been said
+that this was done because Pompey could help him to the Consulship. To
+me it seems that he had already declared to himself that among leading
+men in Rome Pompey was the one to whom the Republic would look with the
+most security as a bulwark, and that on that account he had resolved to
+bind himself to Pompey in some political marriage. Be that as it may,
+there was no tampering with democracy in the speech Pro Lege Manilia. Of
+all the extant orations made by him before his Consulship, the attentive
+reader will sympathize the least with that of Fonteius. After his
+scathing onslaught on Verres for provincial plunder, he defended the
+plunderer of the Gauls, and held up the suffering allies of Rome to
+ridicule as being hardly entitled to good government. This he did simply
+as an advocate, without political motive of any kind--in the days in
+which he was supposed to be currying favor with democracy--governed by
+private friendship, looking forward, probably, to some friendly office
+in return, as was customary. It was thus that afterward he defended
+Antony, his colleague in the Consulship, whom he knew to have been a
+corrupt governor. Autronius had been a party to Catiline's conspiracy,
+and Autronius had been Cicero's school-fellow; but Cicero, for some
+reserved reason with which we are not acquainted, refused to plead for
+Autronius. There is, I maintain, no ground for suggesting that Cicero
+had shown by his speeches before his Consulship any party adherence. The
+declaration which he made after his Consulship, in the speech for Sulla,
+that up to the time of Catiline's first conspiracy forensic duties had
+not allowed him to devote himself to party politics, is entitled to
+belief: we know, indeed, that it was so. As Quaestor, as AEdile, and as
+Praetor, he did not interfere in the political questions of Rome, except
+in demanding justice from judges and purity from governors. When he
+became Consul then he became a politician, and after that there was
+certainly no vacillation in his views. Critics say that he surrendered
+himself to Caesar when Caesar became master. We shall come to that
+hereafter; but the accusation with which I am dealing now is that which
+charges him with having abandoned the democratic memories of his youth
+as soon as he had enveloped himself with the consular purple. There had
+been no democratic promises, and there was no change when he became
+Consul.
+
+In truth, Cicero's political convictions were the same from the
+beginning to the end of his career, with a consistency which is by no
+means usual in politicians; for though, before his Consulship, he had
+not taken up politics as a business he had entertained certain political
+views, as do all men who live in public. From the first to the last we
+may best describe him by the word we have now in use, as a conservative.
+The government of Rome had been an oligarchy for many years, though much
+had been done by the citizens to reduce the thraldom which an oligarchy
+is sure to exact. To that oligarchy Cicero was bound by all the
+convictions, by all the practices, and by all the prejudices of his
+life. When he speaks of a Republic he speaks of a people and of an
+Empire governed by an oligarchy; he speaks of a power to be kept in the
+hands of a few--for the benefit of the few, and of the many if it might
+be--but at any rate in the hands of a few. That those few should be so
+select as to admit of no new-comers among them, would probably have been
+a portion of his political creed, had he not been himself a "novus
+homo." As he was the first of his family to storm the barrier of the
+fortress, he had been forced to depend much on popular opinion; but not
+on that account had there been any dealings between him and democracy.
+That the Empire should be governed according to the old oligarchical
+forms which had been in use for more than four centuries, and had
+created the power of Rome--that was his political creed. That Consuls,
+Censors, and Senators might go on to the end of time with no diminution
+of their dignity, but with great increase of justice and honor and truth
+among them--that was his political aspiration. They had made Rome what
+it was, and he knew and could imagine nothing better; and, odious as an
+oligarchy is seen to be under the strong light of experience to which
+prolonged ages has subjected it, the aspiration on his part was noble.
+He has been wrongly accused of deserting "that democracy with which he
+had flirted in his youth." There had been no democracy in his youth,
+though there had existed such a condition in the time of the Gracchi.
+There was none in his youth and none in his age. That which has been
+wrongly called democracy was conspiracy--not a conspiracy of democrats
+such as led to our Commonwealth, or to the American Independence, or to
+the French Revolution; but conspiracy of a few nobles for the better
+assurance of the plunder, and the power, and the high places of the
+Empire. Of any tendency toward democracy no man has been less justly
+accused than Cicero, unless it might be Caesar. To Caesar we must accord
+the merit of having seen that a continuation of the old oligarchical
+forms was impracticable This Cicero did not see. He thought that the
+wounds inflicted by the degeneracy and profligacy of individuals were
+curable. It is attributed to Caesar that he conceived the grand idea of
+establishing general liberty under the sole dominion of one great, and
+therefore beneficent, ruler. I think he saw no farther than that he, by
+strategy, management, and courage might become this ruler, whether
+beneficent or the reverse. But here I think that it becomes the writer,
+whether he be historian, biographer, or fill whatever meaner position he
+may in literature, to declare that no beneficence can accompany such a
+form of government. For all temporary sleekness, for metropolitan
+comfort and fatness, the bill has to be paid sooner or later in
+ignorance, poverty, and oppression. With an oligarchy there will be
+other, perhaps graver, faults; but with an oligarchy there will be salt,
+though it be among a few. There will be a Cicero now and again--or at
+least a Cato. From the dead, stagnant level of personal despotism there
+can be no rising to life till corruption paralyzes the hands of power,
+and the fabric falls by its own decay Of this no proof can be found in
+the world's history so manifest as that taught by the Roman Empire.
+
+I think it is made clear by a study of Cicero's life and works, up to
+the period of his exile, that an adhesion to the old forms of the Roman
+Government was his guiding principle. I am sure that they who follow me
+to the close of his career will acknowledge that after his exile he
+lived for this principle, and that he died for it. "Respublica," the
+Republic, was the one word which to his ear contained a political charm.
+It was the shibboleth by which men were to be conjured into well-being.
+The word constitution is nearly as potent with us. But it is essential
+that the reader of Roman history and Roman biography should understand
+that the appellation had in it, for all Roman ears, a thoroughly
+conservative meaning. Among those who at Cicero's period dealt with
+politics in Rome--all of whom, no doubt, spoke of the Republic as the
+vessel of State which was to be defended by all persons--there were four
+classes. These were they who simply desired the plunder of the
+State--the Catilines, the Sullas of the day, and the Antonys; men such
+as Verres had been, and Fonteius, and Autronius. The other three can be
+best typified each by one man. There was Caesar, who knew that the
+Republic was gone, past all hope. There was Cato--"the dogmatical fool
+Cato" as Mommsen calls him, perhaps with some lack of the historian's
+dignity--who was true to the Republic, who could not bend an inch, and
+was thus as detrimental to any hope of reconstruction as a Catiline or a
+Caesar. Cicero was of the fourth class, believing in the Republic, intent
+on saving it, imbued amid all his doubts with a conviction that if the
+"optimates" or "boni"--the leading men of the party--would be true to
+themselves, Consuls, Censors, and Senate would still suffice to rule the
+world; but prepared to give and take with those who were opposed to him.
+It was his idea that political integrity should keep its own hands
+clean, but should wink at much dirt in the world at large. Nothing, he
+saw, could be done by Catonic rigor. We can see now that Ciceronic
+compromises were, and must have been, equally ineffective. The patient
+was past cure. But in seeking the truth as to Cicero, we have to
+perceive that amid all his doubts, frequently in despondency, sometimes
+overwhelmed by the misery and hopelessness of his condition, he did hold
+fast by this idea to the end. The frequent expressions made to Atticus
+in opposition to this belief are to be taken as the murmurs of his mind
+at the moment; as you shall hear a man swear that all is gone, and see
+him tear his hair, and shall yet know that there is a deep fund of hope
+within his bosom. It was the ingratitude of his political friends, his
+"boni" and his "optimates," of Pompey as their head, which tried him the
+sorest; but he was always forgiving them, forgiving Pompey as the head
+of them, because he knew that, were he to be severed from them, then the
+political world must be closed to him altogether.
+
+Of Cicero's strength or Cicero's weakness Pompey seems to have known
+nothing. He was no judge of men. Caesar measured him with a great
+approach to accuracy. Caesar knew him to be the best Roman of his day;
+one who, if he could be brought over to serve in Caesarean ranks, would
+be invaluable--because of his honesty, his eloquence, and his
+capability; but he knew him as one who must be silenced if he were not
+brought to serve on the Caesarean side. Such a man, however, might be
+silenced for a while--taught to perceive that his efforts were vain--and
+then brought into favor by further overtures, and made of use.
+Personally he was pleasant to Caesar, who had taste enough to know that
+he was a man worthy of all personal dignity. But Caesar was not, I think,
+quite accurate in his estimation, having allowed himself to believe at
+the last that Cicero's energy on behalf of the Republic had been
+quelled.
+
+[Sidenote: B.C. 58, aetat. 49.]
+
+Now we will go back to the story of Cicero's exile. Gradually during the
+preceding year he had learned that Clodius was preparing to attack him,
+and to doubt whether he could expect protection from the Triumvirate.
+That he could be made safe by the justice either of the people or by
+that of any court before which he could be tried, seems never to have
+occurred to him. He knew the people and he knew the courts too well.
+Pompey no doubt might have warded off the coming evil; such at least was
+Cicero's idea. To him Pompey was the greatest political power as yet
+extant in Rome; but he was beginning to believe that Pompey would be
+untrue to him. When he had sent to Pompey a long account of the grand
+doings of his Consulship, Pompey had replied with faintest praises. He
+had rejected the overtures of the Triumvirate. In the last letter to
+Atticus in the year before, written in August,[272] he had declared that
+the Republic was ruined; that they who had brought things to this
+pass--meaning the Triumvirate--were hostile; but, for himself, he was
+confident in saying that he was quite safe in the good will of men
+around him. There is a letter to his brother written in November, the
+next letter in the collection, in which he says that Pompey and Caesar
+promise him everything. With the exception of two letters of
+introduction, we have nothing from him till he writes to Atticus from
+the first scene of his exile.
+
+When the new year commenced, Clodius was Tribune of the people, and
+immediately was active. Piso and Gabinius were Consuls. Piso was kinsman
+to Piso Frugi, who had married Cicero's daughter,[273]and was expected
+to befriend Cicero at this crisis. But Clodius procured the allotment of
+Syria and Macedonia to the two Consuls by the popular vote. They were
+provinces rich in plunder; and it was matter of importance for a Consul
+to know that the prey which should come to him as Proconsul should be
+worthy of his grasp. They were, therefore, ready to support the Tribune
+in what he proposed to do. It was necessary to Cicero's enemies that
+there should be some law by which Cicero might be condemned. It would
+not be within the power of Clodius, even with the Triumvirate at his
+back, to drive the man out of Rome and out of Italy, without an alleged
+cause. Though justice had been tabooed, law was still in vogue. Now
+there was a matter as to which Cicero was open to attack. As Consul he
+had caused certain Roman citizens to be executed as conspirators, in the
+teeth of a law which enacted that no Roman citizen should be condemned
+to die except by a direct vote of the people. It had certainly become a
+maxim of the constitution of the Republic that a citizen should not be
+made to suffer death except by the voice of the people. The Valerian,
+the Porcian, and the Sempronian laws had all been passed to that effect.
+Now there had been no popular vote as to the execution of Lentulus and
+the other conspirators, who had been taken red-handed in Rome in the
+affair of Catiline. Their death had been decreed by the Senate, and the
+decree of the Senate had been carried out by Cicero; but no decree of
+the Senate had the power of a law. In spite of that decree the old law
+was in force; and no appeal to the people had been allowed to Lentulus.
+But there had grown up in the constitution a practice which had been
+supposed to override the Valerian and Porcian laws. In certain
+emergencies the Senate would call upon the Consuls to see that the
+Republic should suffer no injury, and it had been held that at such
+moments the Consuls were invested with an authority above all law.
+Cicero had been thus strengthened when, as Consul, he had struggled with
+Catiline; but it was an open question, as Cicero himself very well knew.
+In the year of his Consulship--the very year in which Lentulus and the
+others had been strangled--he had defended Rabirius, who was then
+accused of having killed a citizen thirty years before. Rabirius was
+charged with having slaughtered the Tribune Saturninus by consular
+authority, the Consuls of the day having been ordered to defend the
+Republic, as Cicero had been ordered. Rabirius probably had not killed
+Saturninus, nor did any one now care whether he had done so or not. The
+trial had been brought about notoriously by the agency of Caesar, who
+caused himself to be selected by the Praetor as one of the two judges for
+the occasion;[274] and Caesar's object as notoriously was to lessen the
+authority of the Senate, and to support the democratic interest. Both
+Cicero and Hortensius defended Rabirius, but he was condemned by Caesar,
+and, as we are told, himself only escaped by using that appeal to the
+people in support of which he had himself been brought to trial. In
+this, as in so many of the forensic actions of the day, there had been
+an admixture of violence and law. We must, I think, acknowledge that
+there was the same leaven of illegality in the proceedings against
+Lentulus. It had no doubt been the intention of the constitution that a
+Consul, in the heat of an emergency, should use his personal authority
+for the protection of the Commonwealth, but it cannot be alleged that
+there was such an emergency, when the full Senate had had time to debate
+on the fate of the Catiline criminals. Both from Caesar's words as
+reported by Sallust, and from Cicero's as given to us by himself, we are
+aware that an idea of the illegality of the proceeding was present in
+the minds of Senators at the moment. But, though law was loved at Rome,
+all forensic and legislative proceedings were at this time carried on
+with monstrous illegality. Consuls consulted the heavens falsely;
+Tribunes used their veto violently; judges accepted bribes openly; the
+votes of the people were manipulated fraudulently. In the trial and
+escape of Rabirius, the laws were despised by those who pretended to
+vindicate them. Clodius had now become a Tribune by the means of certain
+legal provision, but yet in opposition to all law. In the conduct of the
+affair against Catiline Cicero seems to have been actuated by pure
+patriotism, and to have been supported by a fine courage; but he knew
+that in destroying Lentulus and Cethegus he subjected himself to certain
+dangers. He had willingly faced these dangers for the sake of the object
+in view. As long as he might remain the darling of the people, as he was
+at that moment, he would no doubt be safe; but it was not given to any
+one to be for long the darling of the Roman people. Cicero had become so
+by using an eloquence to which the Romans were peculiarly susceptible;
+but though they loved sweet tongues, long purses went farther with them.
+Since Cicero's Consulship he had done nothing to offend the people,
+except to remain occasionally out of their sight; but he had lost the
+brilliancy of his popularity, and he was aware that it was so.
+
+In discussing popularity in Rome we have to remember of what elements it
+was formed. We hear that this or that man was potent at some special
+time by the assistance coming to him from the popular voice. There was
+in Rome a vast population of idle men, who had been trained by their
+city life to look to the fact of their citizenship for their support,
+and who did, in truth, live on their citizenship. Of "panem et
+circenses" we have all heard, and know that eleemosynary bread and the
+public amusements of the day supplied the material and aesthetic wants of
+many Romans. But men so fed and so amused were sure to need further
+occupations. They became attached to certain friends, to certain
+patrons, and to certain parties, and soon learned that a return was
+expected for the food and for the excitement supplied to them. This they
+gave by holding themselves in readiness for whatever violence was needed
+from them, till it became notorious in Rome that a great party man might
+best attain his political object by fighting for it in the streets. This
+was the meaning of that saying of Crassus, that a man could not be
+considered rich till he could keep an army in his own pay. A popular
+vote obtained and declared by a faction fight in the forum was still a
+popular vote, and if supported by sufficient violence would be valid.
+There had been street fighting of the kind when Cicero had defended
+Caius Cornelius, in the year after his Praetorship; there had been
+fighting of the kind when Rabirius had been condemned in his Consulship.
+We shall learn by-and-by to what extent such fighting prevailed when
+Clodius was killed by Milo's body-guard. At the period of which we are
+now writing, when Clodius was intent on pursuing Cicero to his ruin, it
+was a question with Cicero himself whether he would not trust to a
+certain faction in Rome to fight for him, and so to protect him. Though
+his popularity was on the wane--that general popularity which, we may
+presume, had been produced by the tone of his voice and the grace of his
+language--there still remained to him that other popularity which
+consisted, in truth, of the trained bands employed by the "boni" and the
+"optimates," and which might be used, if need were, in opposition to
+trained bands on the other side.
+
+The bill first proposed by Clodius to the people with the object of
+destroying Cicero did not mention Cicero, nor, in truth, refer to him.
+It purported to enact that he who had caused to be executed any Roman
+citizen not duly condemned to death, should himself be deprived of the
+privilege of water or fire.[275] This condemned no suggested malefactor
+to death; but, in accordance with Roman law, made it impossible that any
+Roman so condemned should live within whatever bounds might be named for
+this withholding of fire and water. The penalty intended was banishment;
+but by this enactment no individual would be banished. Cicero, however,
+at once took the suggestion to himself, and put himself into mourning,
+as a man accused and about to be brought to his trial. He went about the
+streets accompanied by crowds armed for his protection; and Clodius also
+caused himself to be so accompanied. There came thus to be a question
+which might prevail should there be a general fight. The Senate was, as
+a body, on Cicero's side, but was quite unable to cope with the
+Triumvirate. Caesar no doubt had resolved that Cicero should be made to
+go, and Caesar was lord of the Triumvirate. On behalf of Cicero there was
+a large body of the conservative or oligarchical party who were still
+true to him; and they, too, all went into the usual public mourning,
+evincing their desire that the accused man should be rescued from his
+accusers.
+
+The bitterness of Clodius would be surprising did we not know how bitter
+had been Cicero's tongue. When the affair of the Bona Dea had taken
+place there was no special enmity between this debauched young man and
+the great Consul. Cicero, though his own life had ever been clean and
+well ordered, rather affected the company of fast young men when he
+found them to be witty as well as clever. This very Clodius had been in
+his good books till the affair of the Bona Dea. But now the Tribune's
+hatred was internecine. I have hitherto said nothing, and need say but
+little, of a certain disreputable lady named Clodia. She was the sister
+of Clodius and the wife of Metellus Celer. She was accused by public
+voice in Rome of living in incest with her brother, and of poisoning her
+husband. Cicero calls her afterward, in his defence of Caelius, "amica
+omnium." She had the nickname of Quadrantaria[276] given to her, because
+she frequented the public baths, at which the charge was a farthing. It
+must be said also of her, either in praise or in dispraise, that she was
+the Lesbia who inspired the muse of Catullus. It was rumored in Rome
+that she had endeavored to set her cap at Cicero. Cicero in his raillery
+had not spared the lady. To speak publicly the grossest evil of women
+was not opposed to any idea of gallantry current among the Romans. Our
+sense of chivalry, as well as decency, is disgusted by the language used
+by Horace to women who once to him were young and pretty, but have
+become old and ugly. The venom of Cicero's abuse of Clodia annoys us,
+and we have to remember that the gentle ideas which we have taken in
+with our mother's milk had not grown into use with the Romans. It is
+necessary that this woman's name should be mentioned, and it may appear
+here as she was one of the causes of that hatred which burnt between
+Clodius and Cicero, till Clodius was killed in a street row.
+
+It has been presumed that Cicero was badly advised in presuming publicly
+that the new law was intended against himself, and in taking upon
+himself the outward signs of a man under affliction. "The resolution,"
+says Middleton, "of changing his gown was too hasty and inconsiderate,
+and helped to precipitate his ruin." He was sensible of his error when
+too late, and oft reproaches Atticus that, being a stander-by, and less
+heated with the game than himself, he would suffer him to make such
+blunders. And he quotes the words written to Atticus: "Here my judgment
+first failed me, or, indeed, brought me into trouble. We were blind,
+blind I say, in changing our raiment and in appealing to the
+populace. * * * I handed myself and all belonging to me over to my enemies,
+while you were looking on, while you were holding your peace; yes, you,
+who, if your wit in the matter was no better than mine, were impeded by
+no personal fears."[277] But the reader should study the entire letter,
+and study it in the original, for no translator can give its true
+purport. This the reader must do before he can understand Cicero's state
+of mind when writing it, or his relation to Atticus; or the thoughts
+which distracted him when, in accordance with the advice of Atticus, he
+resolved, while yet uncondemned, to retire into banishment. The censure
+to which Atticus is subjected throughout this letter is that which a
+thoughtful, hesitating, scrupulous man is so often disposed to address
+to himself. After reminding Atticus of the sort of advice which should
+have been given--the want of which in the first moment of his exile he
+regrets--and doing this in words of which it is very difficult now to
+catch the exact flavor, he begs to be pardoned for his reproaches. "You
+will forgive me this," he says. "I blame myself more than I do you; but
+I look to you as a second self, and I make you a sharer with me of my
+own folly." I take this letter out of its course, and speak of it as
+connected with that terrible period of doubt to which it refers, in
+which he had to decide whether he would remain in Rome and fight it out,
+or run before his enemies. But in writing the letter afterward his mind
+was as much disturbed as when he did fly. I am inclined, therefore, to
+think that Middleton and others may have been wrong in blaming his
+flight, which they have done, because in his subsequent vacillating
+moods he blamed himself. How the battle might have gone had he remained,
+we have no evidence to show; but we do know that though he fled, he
+returned soon with renewed glory, and altogether overcame the attempt
+which had been made to destroy him.
+
+In this time of his distress a strong effort was made by the Senate to
+rescue him. It was proposed to them that they all as a body should go
+into mourning on his behalf; indeed, the Senate passed a vote to this
+effect, but were prevented by the two Consuls from carrying it out. As
+to what he had best do he and his friends were divided. Some recommended
+that he should remain where he was, and defend himself by
+street-fighting should it be necessary. In doing this he would
+acknowledge that law no longer prevailed in Rome--a condition of things
+to which many had given in their adherence, but with which Cicero would
+surely have been the last to comply. He himself, in his despair, thought
+for a time that the old Roman mode of escape would be preferable, and
+that he might with decorum end his life and his troubles by suicide.
+Atticus and others dissuaded him from this, and recommended him to fly.
+Among these Cato and Hortensius have both been named. To this advice he
+at last yielded, and it may be doubted whether any better could have
+been given. Lawlessness, which had been rampant in Rome before, had,
+under the Triumvirate, become almost lawful. It was Caesar's intention to
+carry out his will with such compliance with the forms of the Republic
+as might suit him, but in utter disregard to all such forms when they
+did not suit him. The banishment of Cicero was one of the last steps
+taken by Caesar before he left Rome for his campaigns in Gaul. He was
+already in command of the legions, and was just without the city. He had
+endeavored to buy Cicero, but had failed. Having failed, he had
+determined to be rid of him. Clodius was but his tool, as were Pompey
+and the two Consuls. Had Cicero endeavored to support himself by
+violence in Rome, his contest would, in fact have been with Caesar.
+
+Cicero, before he went, applied for protection personally to Piso the
+Consul, and to Pompey. Gabinius, the other Consul, had already declared
+his purpose to the Senate, but Piso was bound to him by family ties. He
+himself relates to us in his oration, spoken after his return, against
+this Piso, the manner of the meeting between him and Rome's chief
+officer. Piso told him--so at least Cicero declared in the Senate, and
+we have heard of no contradiction--that Gabinius was so driven by debts
+as to be unable to hold up his head without a rich province; that he
+himself, Piso, could only hope to get a province by taking part with
+Gabinius; that any application to the Consuls was useless, and that
+every one must look after himself.[278] Concerning his appeal to Pompey
+two stories have been given to us, neither of which appears to be true.
+Plutarch says that when Cicero had travelled out from Rome to Pompey's
+Alban villa, Pompey ran out of the back-door to avoid meeting him.
+Plutarch cared more for a good story than for accuracy, and is not
+worthy of much credit as to details unless when corroborated. The other
+account is based on Cicero's assertion that he did see Pompey on this
+occasion. Nine or ten years after the meeting he refers to it in a
+letter to Atticus, which leaves no doubt as to the fact. The story
+founded on that letter declares that Cicero threw himself bodily at his
+old friend's feet, and that Pompey did not lend a hand to raise him, but
+told him simply that everything was in Caesar's hands. This narrative is,
+I think, due to a misinterpretation of Cicero's words, though it is
+given by a close translation of them. He is describing Pompey when Caesar
+after his Gallic wars had crossed the Rubicon, and the two late
+Triumvirates--the third having perished miserably in the East--were in
+arms against each other. "Alter ardet furore et scelere" he says.[279]
+Caesar is pressing on unscrupulous in his passion. "Alter is qui nos sibi
+quondam ad pedes stratos ne sublevabat quidem, qui se nihil contra hujus
+voluntatem aiebat facere posse." "That other one," he continues--meaning
+Pompey, and pursuing his picture of the present contrast--"who in days
+gone by would not even lift me when I lay at his feet, and told me that
+he could do nothing but as Caesar wished it." This little supposed detail
+of biography has been given, no doubt, from an accurate reading of the
+words; but in it the spirit of the writer's mind as he wrote it has
+surely been missed. The prostration of which he spoke, from which Pompey
+would not raise him, the memory of which was still so bitter to him, was
+not a prostration of the body. I hold it to have been impossible that
+Cicero should have assumed such an attitude before Pompey, or that he
+would so have written to Atticus had he done so. It would have been
+neither Roman nor Ciceronian, as displayed by Cicero to Pompey. He had
+gone to his old ally and told him of his trouble, and had no doubt
+reminded him of those promises of assistance which Pompey had so often
+made. Then Pompey had refused to help him, and had assured him, with too
+much truth, that Caesar's will was everything. Again, we have to remember
+that in judging of the meaning of words between two such correspondents
+as Cicero and Atticus, we must read between the lines, and interpret the
+words by creating for ourselves something of the spirit in which they
+were written and in which they were received. I cannot imagine that, in
+describing to Atticus what had occurred at that interview nine years
+after it had taken place, Cicero had intended it to be understood that
+he had really grovelled in the dust.
+
+Toward the end of March he started from Rome, intending to take refuge
+among his friends in Sicily. On the same day Clodius brought in a bill
+directed against Cicero by name and caused it to be carried by the
+people, "Ut Marco Tullio aqua et igni interdictum sit"--that it should
+be illegal to supply Cicero with fire and water. The law when passed
+forbade any one to harbor the criminal within four hundred miles of
+Rome, and declared the doing so to be a capital offence. It is evident,
+from the action of those who obeyed the law, and of those who did not,
+that legal results were not feared so much as the ill-will of those who
+had driven Cicero to his exile. They who refused him succor did do so
+not because to give it him would be illegal, but lest Caesar and Pompey
+would be offended. It did not last long, and during the short period of
+his exile he found perhaps more of friendship than of enmity; but he
+directed his steps in accordance with the bearing of party-spirit. We
+are told that he was afraid to go to Athens, because at Athens lived
+that Autronius whom he had refused to defend. Autronius had been
+convicted of conspiracy and banished, and, having been a Catilinarian
+conspirator, had been in truth on Caesar's side. Nor were geographical
+facts sufficiently established to tell Cicero what places were and what
+were not without the forbidden circle. He sojourned first at Vibo, in
+the extreme south of Italy, intending to pass from thence into Sicily.
+It was there that he learned that a certain distance had been
+prescribed; but it seems that he had already heard that the Proconsular
+Governor of the island would not receive him, fearing Caesar. Then he
+came north from Vibo to Brundisium, that being the port by which
+travellers generally went from Italy to the East. He had determined to
+leave his family in Rome, feeling, probably, that it would be easier for
+him to find a temporary home for himself than for him and them together.
+And there were money difficulties in which Atticus helped him.[280]
+Atticus, always wealthy, had now become a very rich man by the death of
+an uncle. We do not know of what nature were the money arrangements made
+by Cicero at the time, but there can be no doubt that the losses by his
+exile were very great. There was a thorough disruption of his property,
+for which the subsequent generosity of his country was unable altogether
+to atone. But this sat lightly on Cicero's heart. Pecuniary losses never
+weighed heavily with him.
+
+As he journeyed back from Vibo to Brundisium friends were very kind to
+him, in spite of the law. Toward the end of the speech which he made
+five years afterward on behalf of his friend C. Plancius he explains the
+debt of gratitude which he owed to his client, whose kindness to him in
+his exile had been very great. He commences his story of the goodness of
+Plancius by describing the generosity of the towns on the road to
+Brundisium, and the hospitality of his friend Flavius, who had received
+him at his house in the neighborhood of that town, and had placed him
+safely on board a ship when at last he resolved to cross over to
+Dyrrachium. There were many schemes running in his head at this time. At
+one period he had resolved to pass through Macedonia into Asia, and to
+remain for a while at Cyzicum. This idea he expresses in a letter to his
+wife written from Brundisium. Then he goes, wailing no doubt, but in
+words which to me seem very natural as coming from a husband in such a
+condition: "O me perditum, O me afflictum;"[281] exclamations which it
+is impossible to translate, as they refer to his wife's separation from
+himself rather than to his own personal sufferings. "How am I to ask you
+to come to me?" he says; "you a woman, ill in health, worn out in body
+and in spirit. I cannot ask you! Must I then live without you? It must
+be so, I think. If there be any hope of my return, it is you must look
+to it, you that must strengthen it; but if, as I fear, the thing is
+done, then come to me. If I can have you I shall not be altogether
+destroyed." No doubt these are wailings; but is a man unmanly because he
+so wails to the wife of his bosom? Other humans have written prettily
+about women: it was common for Romans to do so. Catullus desires from
+Lesbia as many kisses as are the stars of night or the sands of Libya.
+Horace swears that he would perish for Chloe if Chloe might be left
+alive. "When I am dying," says Tibullus to Delia, "may I be gazing at
+you; may my last grasp hold your hand." Propertius tells Cynthia that
+she stands to him in lieu of home and parents, and all the joys of life.
+"Whether he be sad with his friends or happy, Cynthia does it all." The
+language in each case is perfect; but what other Roman was there of whom
+we have evidence that he spoke to his wife like this? Ovid in his
+letters from his banishment says much of his love for his wife; but
+there is no passion expressed in anything that Ovid wrote.
+
+Clodius, as soon as the enactment against Cicero became law, caused it
+be carried into effect with all its possible cruelties. The criminal's
+property was confiscated. The house on the Palatine Hill was destroyed,
+and the goods were put up to auction, with, as we are told, a great lack
+of buyers. His choicest treasures were carried away by the Consuls
+themselves. Piso, who had lived near him in Rome, got for himself and
+for his father-in-law the rich booty from the town house. The country
+villas were also destroyed, and Gabinius, who had a country house close
+by Cicero's Tusculan retreat, took even the very shrubs out of the
+garden. He tells the story of the greed and enmity of the Consuls in the
+speech he made after his return, Pro Domo Sua,[282] pleading for the
+restitution of his household property. "My house on the Palatine was
+burnt," he says, "not by any accident, but by arson. In the mean time
+the Consuls were feasting, and were congratulating themselves among the
+conspirators, when one boasted that he had been Catiline's friend, the
+other that Cethegus had been his cousin." By this he implies that the
+conspiracy which during his Consulship had been so odious to Rome was
+now, in these days of the Triumvirate, again in favor among Roman
+aristocrats.
+
+He went across from Brundisium to Dyrrachium, and from thence to
+Thessalonica, where he was treated with most loving-kindness by
+Plancius, who was Quaestor in these parts, and who came down to
+Dyrrachium to meet him, clad in mourning for the occasion. This was the
+Plancius whom he afterward defended, and indeed he was bound to do so.
+Plancius seems to have had but little dread of the law, though he was a
+Roman officer employed in the very province to the government of which
+the present Consul Piso had already been appointed. Thessalonica was
+within four hundred miles, and yet Cicero lived there with Plancius for
+some months.
+
+The letters from Cicero during his exile are to me very touching, though
+I have been told so often that in having written them he lacked the
+fortitude of a Roman. Perhaps I am more capable of appreciating natural
+humanity than Roman fortitude. We remember the story of the Spartan boy
+who allowed the fox to bite him beneath his frock without crying. I
+think we may imagine that he refrained from tears in public, before some
+herd of school-fellows, or a bench of masters, or amid the sternness of
+parental authority; but that he told his sister afterward how he had
+been tortured, or his mother as he lay against her bosom, or perhaps his
+chosen chum. Such reticences are made dignified by the occasion, when
+something has to be won by controlling the expression to which nature
+uncontrolled would give utterance, but are not in themselves evidence
+either of sagacity or of courage. Roman fortitude was but a suit of
+armor to be worn on state occasions. If we come across a warrior with
+his crested helmet and his sword and his spear, we see, no doubt, an
+impressive object. If we could find him in his night-shirt, the same man
+would be there, but those who do not look deeply into things would be
+apt to despise him because his grand trappings were absent. Chance has
+given us Cicero in his night-shirt. The linen is of such fine texture
+that we are delighted with it, but we despise the man because he wore a
+garment--such as we wear ourselves indeed, though when we wear it nobody
+is then brought in to look at us.
+
+There is one most touching letter written from Thessalonica to his
+brother, by whom, after thoughts vacillating this way and that, he was
+unwilling to be visited, thinking that a meeting would bring more of
+pain than of service. "Mi frater, mi frater, mi frater!" he begins. The
+words in English would hardly give all the pathos. "Did you think that I
+did not write because I am angry, or that I did not wish to see you? I
+angry with you! But I could not endure to be seen by you. You would not
+have seen your brother; not him whom you had left; not him whom you had
+known; not him whom, weeping as you went away, you had dismissed,
+weeping himself as he strove to follow you."[283] Then he heaps blame on
+his own head, bitterly accusing himself because he had brought his
+brother to such a pass of sorrow. In this letter he throws great blame
+upon Hortensius, whom together with Pompey he accuses of betraying him.
+What truth there may have been in this accusation as to Hortensius we
+have no means of saying. He couples Pompey in the same charge, and as to
+Pompey's treatment of him there can be no doubt. Pompey had been untrue
+to his promises because of his bond with Caesar. It is probable that
+Hortensius had failed to put himself forward on Cicero's behalf with
+that alacrity which the one advocate had expected from the other. Cicero
+and Hortensius were friends afterward, but so were Cicero and Pompey.
+Cicero was forgiving by nature, and also by self-training. It did not
+suit his purposes to retain his enmities. Had there been a possibility
+of reconciling Antony to the cause of the "optimates" after the
+Philippics, he would have availed himself of it.
+
+Cicero at one time intended to go to Buthrotum in Epirus, where Atticus
+possessed a house and property; but he changed his purpose. He remained
+at Thessalonica till November, and then returned to Dyrrachium, having
+all through his exile been kept alive by tidings of steps taken for his
+recall. There seems very soon to have grown up a feeling in Rome that
+the city had disgraced itself by banishing such a man; and Caesar had
+gone to his provinces. We can well imagine that when he had once left
+Rome, with all his purposes achieved, having so far quieted the tongue
+of the strong speaker who might have disturbed them, he would take no
+further steps to perpetuate the orator's banishment. Then Pompey and
+Clodius soon quarrelled. Pompey, without Caesar to direct him, found the
+arrogance of the Patrician Tribune insupportable. We hear of wheels
+within wheels, and stories within stories, in the drama of Roman history
+as it was played at this time. Together with Cicero, it had been
+necessary to Caesar's projects that Cato also should be got out of Rome;
+and this had been managed by means of Clodius, who had a bill passed for
+the honorable employment of Cato on state purposes in Cyprus. Cato had
+found himself obliged to go. It was as though our Prime-minister had got
+parliamentary authority for sending a noisy member of the Opposition to
+Asiatic Turkey for six months There was an attempt, or an alleged
+attempt, of Clodius to have Pompey murdered; and there was
+street-fighting, so that Pompey was besieged, or pretended to be
+besieged, in his own house. "We might as well seek to set a charivari to
+music as to write the history of this political witches' revel," says
+Mommsen, speaking of the state of Rome when Caesar was gone, Cicero
+banished, and Pompey supposed to be in the ascendant.[284] There was, at
+any rate, quarrelling between Clodius and Pompey, in the course of which
+Pompey was induced to consent to Cicero's return. Then Clodius took upon
+himself, in revenge, to turn against the Triumvirate altogether, and to
+repudiate even Caesar himself. But it was all a vain hurly-burly, as to
+which Caesar, when he heard the details in Gaul, could only have felt how
+little was to be gained by maintaining his alliance with Pompey. He had
+achieved his purpose, which he could not have done without the
+assistance of Crassus, whose wealth, and of Pompey, whose authority,
+stood highest in Rome; and now, having had his legions voted to him, and
+his provinces, and his prolonged term of years, he cared nothing for
+either of them.
+
+There is a little story which must be repeated, as against Cicero, in
+reference to this period of his exile, because it has been told in all
+records of his life. Were I to omit the little story, it would seem as
+though I shunned the records which have been repeated as opposed to his
+credit. He had written, some time back, a squib in which he had been
+severe upon the elder Curio; so it is supposed; but it matters little
+who was the object or what the subject. This had got wind in Rome, as
+such matters do sometimes, and he now feared that it would do him a
+mischief with the Curios and the friends of the Curios. The authorship
+was only matter of gossip. Could it not be denied? "As it is written,"
+says Cicero, "in a style inferior to that which is usual to me, can it
+not be shown not to have been mine?"[285] Had Cicero possessed all the
+Christian virtues, as we hope that prelates and pastors possess them in
+this happy land, he would not have been betrayed into, at any rate, the
+expression of such a wish. As it is, the enemies of Cicero must make the
+most of it. His friends, I think, will look upon it leniently.
+
+Continued efforts were made among Cicero's friends at Rome to bring him
+back, with which he was not altogether contented. He argues the matter
+repeatedly with Atticus, not always in the best temper. His friends at
+Rome were, he thought, doing the matter amiss: they would fail, and he
+would still have to finish his days abroad. Atticus, in his way to
+Epirus, visits him at Dyrrachium, and he is sure that Atticus would not
+have left Rome but that the affair was hopeless. The reader of the
+correspondence is certainly led to the belief that Atticus must have
+been the most patient of friends; but he feels, at the same time, that
+Atticus would not have been patient had not Cicero been affectionate and
+true. The Consuls for the new year were Lentulus and Metellus Nepos. The
+former was Cicero's declared friend, and the other had already abandoned
+his enmity. Clodius was no longer Tribune, and Pompey had been brought
+to yield. The Senate were all but unanimous. But there was still life in
+Clodius and his party; and day dragged itself after day, and month after
+month, while Cicero still lingered at Dyrrachium, waiting till a bill
+should have been passed by the people. Pompey, who was never
+whole-hearted in anything, had declared that a bill voted by the people
+would be necessary. The bill at last was voted, on the 14th of August,
+and Cicero, who knew well what was being done at Rome, passed over from
+Dyrrachium to Brundisium on the same day, having been a year and four
+months absent from Rome. During the year B.C. 57, up to the time of his
+return, he wrote but three letters that have come to us--two very short
+notes to Atticus, in the first of which he declares that he will come
+over on the authority of a decree of the Senate, without waiting for a
+law. In the second he falls again into despair, declaring that
+everything is over. In the third he asks Metellus for his aid, telling
+the Consul that unless it be given soon the man for whom it is asked
+will no longer be living to receive it. Metellus did give the aid very
+cordially.
+
+It has been remarked that Cicero did nothing for literature during his
+banishment, either by writing essays or preparing speeches; and it has
+been implied that the prostration of mind arising from his misfortunes
+must have been indeed complete, when a man whose general life was made
+marvellous by its fecundity had been repressed into silence. It should,
+however, be borne in mind that there could be no inducement for the
+writing of speeches when there was no opportunity of delivering them. As
+to his essays, including what we call his Philosophy and his Rhetoric,
+they who are familiar with his works will remember how apt he was, in
+all that he produced, to refer to the writings of others. He translates
+and he quotes, and he makes constant use of the arguments and
+illustrations of those who have gone before him. He was a man who rarely
+worked without the use of a library. When I think how impossible it
+would be for me to repeat this oft-told tale of Cicero's life without a
+crowd of books within reach of my hand, I can easily understand why
+Cicero was silent at Thessalonica and Dyrrachium. It has been remarked
+also by a modern critic that we find "in the letters from exile a
+carelessness and inaccuracy of expression which contrasts strongly with
+the style of his happier days." I will not for a moment put my judgment
+in such a matter in opposition to that of Mr. Tyrrell--but I should
+myself have been inclined rather to say that the style of Cicero's
+letters varies constantly, being very different when used to Atticus, or
+to his brother, or to lighter friends such as Poetus and Trebatius; and
+very different again when business of state was in hand, as are his
+letters to Decimus Brutus, Cassius Brutus, and Plancus. To be correct in
+familiar letters is not to charm. A studied negligence is needed to make
+such work live to posterity--a grace of loose expression which may
+indeed have been made easy by use, but which is far from easy to the
+idle and unpractised writer. His sorrow, perhaps, required a style of
+its own. I have not felt my own untutored perception of the language to
+be offended by unfitting slovenliness in the expression of his grief.
+
+
+
+
+APPENDICES TO VOLUME I.
+
+
+
+
+APPENDIX A.
+
+
+(_See_ ch. II., note [39])
+
+_THE BATTLE OF THE EAGLE AND THE SERPENT._
+
+    Homer, Iliad, lib. xii, 200:
+
+    [Greek:
+    Hoi rh' eti mermerizon ephestaotes para taphroi.
+    Ornis gar sphin epelthe peresemenai memaosin,
+    Aietos upsipetes ep' aristera laon eergon,
+    Phoineenta drakonta pheron onuchessi peloron,
+    Zoon et' aspaironta; kai oupo letheto charmes.
+    Kopse gar auton echonta kata stethos para deiren,
+    Idnotheis opiso; ho d' apo ethen eke chamaze,
+    Algesas oduneisi, mesoi d' eni kabbal' homiloi;
+    Autos de klanxas peteto pnoeis anemoio.]
+
+Pope's translation of the passage, book xii, 231:
+
+   "A signal omen stopp'd the passing host,
+    The martial fury in their wonder lost.
+    Jove's bird on sounding pinions beat the skies;
+    A bleeding serpent, of enormous size,
+    His talons trussed; alive, and curling round,
+    He stung the bird, whose throat received the wound.
+    Mad with the smart, he drops the fatal prey,
+    In airy circles wings his painful way,
+    Floats on the winds, and rends the heav'ns with cries.
+    Amid the host the fallen serpent lies.
+    They, pale with terror, mark its spires unroll'd,
+    And Jove's portent with beating hearts behold."
+
+Lord Derby's Iliad, book xii, 236:
+
+   "For this I read the future, if indeed
+    To us, about to cross, this sign from Heaven
+    Was sent, to leftward of the astonished crowd:
+    A soaring eagle, bearing in his claws
+    A dragon huge of size, of blood-red hue,
+    Alive; yet dropped him ere he reached his home,
+    Nor to his nestlings bore the intended prey."
+
+Cicero's telling of the story:
+
+   "Hic Jovis altisoni subito pinnata satelles,
+    Arboris e trunco serpentis saucia morsu,
+    Ipsa feris subigit transfigens unguibus anguem
+    Semianimum, et varia graviter cervice micantem.
+    Quem se intorquentem lanians, rostroque cruentans,
+    Jam satiata animum, jam duros ulta dolores,
+    Abjicit efflantem, et laceratum affligit in unda;
+    Seque obitu a solis nitidos convertit ad ortus."
+
+Voltaire's translation:
+
+   "Tel on voit cet oiseau qui porte le tonnerre,
+    Blesse par un serpent elance de la terre;
+    Il s'envole, il entraine au sejour azure
+    L'ennemi tortueux dont il est entoure.
+    Le sang tombe des airs. Il dechire, il devore
+    Le reptile acharne qui le combat encore;
+    Il le perce, il le tient sous ses ongles vainqueurs;
+    Par cent coups redoubles il venge ses douleurs.
+    Le monstre, en expirant, se debat, se replie;
+    Il exhale en poisons les restes de sa vie;
+    Et l'aigle, tout sanglant, fier et victorieux,
+    Le rejette en fureur, et plane au haut des cieux."
+
+Virgil's version, AEneid, lib. xi., 751:
+
+   "Utque volans alte raptum quum fulva draconem
+    Fert aquila, implicuitque pedes, atque unguibus haesit
+    Saucius at serpens sinuosa volumina versat,
+    Arrectisque horret squamis, et sibilat ore,
+    Arduus insurgens. Illa haud minus urget obunco
+    Luctantem rostro; simul aethera verberat alis."
+
+Dryden's translation from Virgil's AEneid, book xi.:
+
+   "So stoops the yellow eagle from on high,
+    And bears a speckled serpent through the sky;
+    Fastening his crooked talons on the prey,
+    The prisoner hisses through the liquid way;
+    Resists the royal hawk, and though opprest,
+    She fights in volumes, and erects her crest.
+    Turn'd to her foe, she stiffens every scale,
+    And shoots her forky tongue, and whisks her threatening tail.
+    Against the victor all defence is weak.
+    Th' imperial bird still plies her with his beak:
+    He tears her bowels, and her breast he gores,
+    Then claps his pinions, and securely soars."
+
+Pitt's translation, book xi.:
+
+   "As when th' imperial eagle soars on high,
+    And bears some speckled serpent through the sky,
+    While her sharp talons gripe the bleeding prey,
+    In many a fold her curling volumes play,
+    Her starting brazen scales with horror rise,
+    The sanguine flames flash dreadful from her eyes
+    She writhes, and hisses at her foe, in vain,
+    Who wins at ease the wide aerial plain,
+    With her strong hooky beak the captive plies,
+    And bears the struggling prey triumphant through the skies."
+
+Shelley's version of the battle, The Revolt of Islam, canto i.:
+
+      "For in the air do I behold indeed
+       An eagle and a serpent wreathed in fight,
+       And now relaxing its impetuous flight,
+       Before the aerial rock on which I stood
+       The eagle, hovering, wheeled to left and right,
+       And hung with lingering wings over the flood,
+    And startled with its yells the wide air's solitude
+
+      "A shaft of light upon its wings descended,
+       And every golden feather gleamed therein--
+       Feather and scale inextricably blended
+       The serpent's mailed and many-colored skin
+       Shone through the plumes, its coils were twined within
+       By many a swollen and knotted fold, and high
+       And far, the neck receding lithe and thin,
+       Sustained a crested head, which warily
+    Shifted and glanced before the eagle's steadfast eye.
+
+      "Around, around, in ceaseless circles wheeling,
+       With clang of wings and scream, the eagle sailed
+       Incessantly--sometimes on high concealing
+       Its lessening orbs, sometimes, as if it failed,
+       Drooped through the air, and still it shrieked and wailed,
+       And casting back its eager head, with beak
+       And talon unremittingly assailed
+       The wreathed serpent, who did ever seek
+    Upon his enemy's heart a mortal wound to wreak
+
+      "What life, what power was kindled, and arose
+       Within the sphere of that appalling fray!
+       For, from the encounter of those wond'rous foes,
+       A vapor like the sea's suspended spray
+       Hung gathered; in the void air, far away,
+       Floated the shattered plumes; bright scales did leap,
+       Where'er the eagle's talons made their way,
+       Like sparks into the darkness; as they sweep,
+    Blood stains the snowy foam of the tumultuous deep.
+
+      "Swift chances in that combat--many a check,
+       And many a change--a dark and wild turmoil;
+       Sometimes the snake around his enemy's neck
+       Locked in stiff rings his adamantine coil,
+       Until the eagle, faint with pain and toil,
+       Remitted his strong flight, and near the sea
+       Languidly fluttered, hopeless so to foil
+       His adversary, who then reared on high
+    His red and burning crest, radiant with victory.
+
+      "Then on the white edge of the bursting surge,
+       Where they had sunk together, would the snake
+       Relax his suffocating grasp, and scourge
+       The wind with his wild writhings; for, to break
+       That chain of torment, the vast bird would shake
+       The strength of his unconquerable wings
+       As in despair, and with his sinewy neck
+       Dissolve in sudden shock those linked rings,
+    Then soar--as swift as smoke from a volcano springs.
+
+      "Wile baffled wile, and strength encountered strength,
+       Thus long, but unprevailing--the event
+       Of that portentous fight appeared at length.
+       Until the lamp of day was almost spent
+       It had endured, when lifeless, stark, and rent,
+       Hung high that mighty serpent, and at last
+       Fell to the sea, while o'er the continent,
+       With clang of wings and scream, the eagle past,
+    Heavily borne away on the exhausted blast."
+
+I have repudiated the adverse criticism on Cicero's poetry which has
+been attributed to Juvenal; but, having done so, am bound in fairness
+to state that which is to be found elsewhere in any later author of
+renown as a classic. In the treatise De Oratoribus, attributed to
+Tacitus, and generally published with his works by him--a treatise
+commenced, probably, in the last year of Vespasian's reign, and
+completed only in that of Domitian--Cicero as a poet is spoken of
+with a severity of censure which the writer presumes to have been his
+recognized desert. "For Caesar," he says, "and Brutus made verses, and
+sent them to the public libraries; not better, indeed, than Cicero, but
+with less of general misfortune, because only a few people knew that
+they had done so." This must be taken for what it is worth. The treatise,
+let it have been written by whom it might, is full of wit, and is
+charming in language and feeling. It is a dialogue after the manner of
+Cicero himself, and is the work of an author well conversant with the
+subjects in hand. But it is, no doubt, the case that those two
+unfortunate lines which have been quoted became notorious in Rome when
+there was a party anxious to put down Cicero.
+
+
+
+
+APPENDIX B.
+
+
+(_See_ ch. IV., note [84])
+
+FROM THE BRUTUS--CA. XCII., XCIII.
+
+"There were at that time two orators, Cotta and Hortensius, who
+towered above all others, and incited me to rival them. The first
+spoke with self-restraint and moderation, clearly and easily,
+expressing his ideas in appropriate language. The other was
+magnificent and fierce; not such as you remember him, Brutus, when he
+was already failing, but full of life both in his words and actions. I
+then resolved that Hortensius should, of the two, be my model, because
+I felt myself like to him in his energy, and nearer to him in his age.
+I observed that when they were in the same causes, those for Canuleius
+and for our consular Dolabella, though Cotta was the senior counsel,
+Hortensius took the lead. A large gathering of men and the noise of
+the Forum require that a speaker shall be quick, on fire, active, and
+loud. The year after my return from Asia I undertook the charge of
+causes that were honorable, and in that year I was seeking to be
+Quaestor, Cotta to be Consul, and Hortensius to be Praetor. Then for a
+year I served as Quaestor in Sicily. Cotta, after his Consulship, went
+as governor into Gaul, and then Hortensius was, and was considered to
+be, first at the bar. When I had been back from Sicily twelve months
+I began to find that whatever there was within me had come to such
+perfection as it might attain. I feel that I am speaking too much of
+myself, but it is done, not that you may be made to own my ability or
+my eloquence--which is far from my thoughts--but that you may see how
+great was my toil and my industry. Then, when I had been employed for
+nearly five years in many cases, and was accounted a leading advocate,
+I specially concerned myself in conducting the great cause on behalf
+of Sicily--the trial of Verres--when I and Hortensius were AEdile and
+Consul designate.
+
+"But as this discussion of ours is intended to produce not a mere
+catalogue of orators, but some true lessons of oratory, let us see
+what there was in Hortensius that we must blame. When he was out of
+his Consulship, seeing that among past Consuls there was no one on a
+par with him, and thinking but little of those who were below consular
+rank, he became idle in his work to which from boyhood he had devoted
+himself, and chose to live in the midst of his wealth, as he thought
+a happier life--certainly an easier one. The first two or three years
+took off something from him. As the gradual decay of a picture will
+be observed by the true critic, though it be not seen by the world at
+large, so was it with his decay. From day to day he became more and
+more unlike his old self, failing in all branches of oratory, but
+specially in the rapidity and continuity of his words. But for myself
+I never rested, struggling always to increase whatever power there was
+in me by practice of every kind, especially in writing. Passing over
+many things in the year after I was AEdile, I will come to that in
+which I was elected first Praetor, to the great delight of the public
+generally; for I had gained the good-will of men, partly by my
+attention to the causes which I undertook, but specially by a certain
+new strain of eloquence, as excellent as it was uncommon, with which
+I spoke." Cicero, when he wrote this of himself, was an old man
+sixty-two years of age, broken hearted for the loss of his daughter,
+to whom it was no doubt allowed among his friends to praise himself
+with the garrulity of years, because it was understood that he had
+been unequalled in the matter of which he was speaking. It is easy for
+us to laugh at his boastings; but the account which he gives of his
+early life, and of the manner in which he attained the excellence for
+which he had been celebrated, is of value.
+
+
+
+
+APPENDIX C.
+
+
+(_See_ ch. VI., note [117])
+
+There was still prevailing in Rome at this time a strong feeling that
+a growing taste for these ornamental luxuries was injurious to the
+Republic, undermining its simplicity and weakening its stability. We
+are well aware that its simplicity was a thing of the past, and its
+stability gone The existence of a Verres is proof that it was so; but
+still the feeling remained--and did remain long after the time of
+Cicero--that these beautiful things were a sign of decay. We know
+how conquering Rome caught the taste for them from conquered Greece.
+"Graecia capta ferum victorem cepit, et artes intulit agresti Latio."
+[286] Cicero submitted himself to this new captivity readily, but with
+apologies, as shown in his pretended abnegation of all knowledge
+of art. Two years afterward, in a letter to Atticus, giving him
+instructions as to the purchase of statues, he declares that he is
+altogether carried away by his longing for such things, but not
+without a feeling of shame. "Nam in eo genere sic studio efferimur ut
+abs te adjuvandi, ab aliis propre reprehendi simus"[287]--"Though you
+will help me, others I know will blame me." The same feeling is
+expressed beautifully, but no doubt falsely, by Horace when he
+declares, as Cicero had done, his own indifference to such delicacies:
+
+    "Gems, marbles, ivory, Tuscan statuettes,
+     Pictures, gold plate, Gaetulian coverlets,
+     There are who have not. One there is, I trow,
+     Who cares not greatly if he has or no."[288]
+
+Many years afterward, in the time of Tiberius, Velleius Paterculus says
+the same when he is telling how ignorant Mummius was of sculpture, who,
+when he had taken Corinth, threatened those who had to carry away the
+statues from their places, that if they broke any they should be made to
+replace them. "You will not doubt, however," the historian says, "that
+it would have been better for the Republic to remain ignorant of these
+Corinthian gems than to understand them as well as it does now. That
+rudeness befitted the public honor better than our present taste."[289]
+Cicero understood well enough, with one side of his intelligence, that
+as the longing for these things grew in the minds of rich men, as the
+leading Romans of the day became devoted to luxury rather than to work,
+the ground on which the Republic stood must be sapped. A Marcellus or a
+Scipio had taken glory in ornamenting the city. A Verres or even an
+Hortensius--even a Cicero--was desirous of beautiful things for his own
+house. But still, with the other side of his intelligence, he saw that a
+perfect citizen might appreciate art, and yet do his duty, might
+appreciate art, and yet save his country. What he did not see was, that
+the temptations of luxury, though compatible with virtue, are
+antagonistic to it. The camel may be made to go through the eye of the
+needle--but it is difficult.
+
+
+
+
+APPENDIX D.
+
+
+(_See_ ch. VII., note [144])
+
+PRO LEGE MANILIA--CA. X., XVI.
+
+"Utinam, Quirites, virorum fortium, atque innocentium copiam tantam
+haberetis, ut haec vobis deliberatio difficilis esset, quemnam
+potissimum tantis rebus ac tanto bello praeficiendum putaretis! Nunc
+vero cum sit unus Cn. Pompeius, qui non modo eorum hominum, qui nunc
+sunt, gloriam, sed etiam antiquitatis memoriam virtute superarit; quae
+res est, quae cujusquam animum in hac causa dubium facere posset?
+Ego enim sic existimo, in summo imperatore quatuor has res inesse
+oportere, scientiam rei militaris, virtutem, auctoritatem,
+felicitatem. Quis igitur hoc homine scientior umquam aut fuit, aut
+esse debuit? qui e ludo, atque pueritiae disciplina, bello maximo
+atque acerrimis hostibus, ad patris exercitum atque in militiae
+disciplinam profectus est? qui extrema pueritia miles fuit summi
+imperatoris? ineunte adolescentia maximi ipse exercitus imperator? qui
+saepius cum hoste conflixit, quam quisquam cum inimico concertavit?
+plura bella gessit, quam caeteri legerunt? plures provincias confecit,
+quam alii concupiverunt? cujus adolescentia ad scientiam rei militaris
+non alienis praeceptis, sed suis imperiis; non offensionibus belli,
+sed victoriis; non stipendiis, sed triumphis est erudita? Quod
+denique genus belli esse potest, in quo illum non exercuerit fortuna
+reipublicae? Civile; Africanum; Transalpinum; Hispaniense; mistum
+ex civitatibus atque ex bellicosissimis nationibus servile; navale
+bellum, varia et diversa genera, et bellorum et hostium, non solum
+gesta ab hoc uno, sed etiam confecta, nullam rem esse declarant, in
+usu militari positam, quae hojus viri scientiam fugere posset.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Quare cum et bellum ita necessarium sit, ut negligi non possit; ita
+magnum, ut accuratissime sit administrandum; et cum ei imperatorem
+praeficere possitis, in quo sit eximia belli scientia, singularis
+virtus, clarissima auctoritas, egregia fortuna; dubitabitis, Quirites,
+quin hoc tantum boni, quod vobis a diis immortalibus oblatum et datum
+est, in rempublicam conservandam atque amplificandam conferatis?"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"I could wish, Quirites, that there was open to you so large a choice
+of men capable at the same time, and honest, that you might find a
+difficulty in deciding who might best be selected for command in a
+war so momentous as this. But now when Pompey alone has surpassed in
+achievements not only those who live, but all of whom we have read in
+history, what is there to make any one hesitate in the matter? In my
+opinion there are four qualities to be desired in a general--military
+knowledge, valor, authority, and fortune. But whoever was or was ever
+wanted to be more skilled than this man, who, taken fresh from school
+and from the lessons of his boyhood, was subjected to the discipline
+of his father's army during one of our severest wars, when our enemies
+were strong against us? In his earliest youth he served under our
+greatest general. As years went on he was himself in command over
+a large army. He has been more frequent in fighting than others in
+quarrelling. Few have read of so many battles as he has fought.
+He has conquered more provinces than others have desired to pillage. He
+learned the art of war not from written precepts, but by his own
+practice; not from reverses, but from victories. He does not count his
+campaigns, but the triumphs which he has won. What nature of warfare is
+there in which the Republic has not used his services? Think of our
+Civil war[290]--of our African war[291]--of our war on the other side of
+the Alps[292]--of our Spanish wars[293]--of our Servile war[294]--which
+was carried on by the energies of so many mighty people--and this
+Maritime war.[295] How many enemies had we, how various were our
+contests! They were all not only carried through by this one man, but
+brought to an end so gloriously as to show that there is nothing in the
+practice of warfare which has escaped his knowledge.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Seeing, therefore, that this war cannot be neglected; that its
+importance demands the utmost care in its administration; that it
+requires a general in whom should be found sure military science,
+manifest valor, conspicuous authority, and pre-eminent good
+fortune--do you doubt, Quirites, but that you should use the great
+blessing which the gods have given you for the preservation and glory
+of the Republic?"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+On reading, however, the piece over again, I almost doubt whether
+there be any passages in it which should be selected as superior to
+others.
+
+
+
+
+APPENDIX E.
+
+
+(_See_ ch. XI., note [235])
+
+_LUCAN, LIBER I._
+
+    "O male concordes, nimiaque cupidine caeci,
+     Quid miscere juvat vires orbemque tenere
+     In medio."
+
+    "Temporis angusti mansit concordia discors,
+     Paxque fuit non sponte ducum. Nam sola futuri
+     Crassus erat belli medius mora. Qualiter undas
+     Qui secat, et geminum gracilis mare separat isthmos,
+     Nec patitur conferre fretum; si terra recedat,
+     Ionium AEgaeo frangat mare. Sic, ubi saeva
+     Arma ducum dirimens, miserando funere Crassus
+     Assyrias latio maculavit sanguine Carras."
+
+    "Dividitur ferro regnum; populique potentis,
+     Quae mare, quae terras, quae totum possidet orbem,
+     Non cepit fortuna duos."
+
+    "Tu nova ne veteres obscurent acta triumphos,
+     Et victis cedat piratica laurea Gallis,
+     Magne, times; te jam series, ususque laborum
+     Erigit, impatiensque loci fortuna secundi.
+     Nec quemquam jam ferre potest Caesarve priorem,
+     Pompeiusve parem. Quis justius induit arma,
+     Scire nefas; magno se judice quisque tuetur,
+     Victrix causa deis placuit sed victa, Catoni.[296]
+     Nec coiere pares; alter vergentibus annis
+     In senium, longoque togae tranquillior usu
+     Dedidicit jam pace ducem; famaeque petitor
+     Multa dare in vulgas; totus popularibus auris
+     Impelli, plausuque sui gaudere theatri;
+     Nec reparare novas vires, multumque priori
+     Credere fortunae. Stat magni nominis umbra."
+
+                     "Sed non in Caesare tantum
+     Nomen erat, nec fama ducis; sed nescia virtus
+     Stare loco; solusque pudor non vincere bello.
+     Acer et indomitus; quo spes, quoque ira vocasset,
+     Ferre manum, et nunquam te merando parcere ferro;
+     Successus urgere suos; instare favori
+     Numinis."--Lucan, lib. i.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"O men so ill-fitted to agree, O men blind with greed, of what service
+can it be that you should join your powers, and possess the world
+between you?"
+
+"For a short time the ill-sorted compact lasted, and there was a peace
+which each of them abhorred. Crassus alone stood between the others,
+hindering for a while the coming war--as an isthmus separates two
+waters and forbids sea to meet sea. If the morsel of land gives way,
+the Ionian waves and the AEgean dash themselves in foam against each
+other. So was it with the arms of the two chiefs when Crassus fell,
+and drenched the Assyrian Carrae with Roman blood."
+
+"Then the possession of the Empire was put to the arbitration of the
+sword. The fortunes of a people which possessed sea and earth and the
+whole world, were not sufficient for two men."
+
+"You, Magnus, you, Pompeius, fear lest newer deeds than yours should
+make dull your old triumphs, and the scattering of the pirates should
+be as nothing to the conquering of Gaul. The practice of many wars has
+so exalted you, O Caesar, that you cannot put up with a second place.
+Caesar will endure no superior; but Pompey will have no equal. Whose
+cause was the better the poet dares not inquire! Each will have his
+own advocate in history. On the side of the conqueror the gods ranged
+themselves. Cato has chosen to follow the conquered.
+
+"But surely the men were not equal. The one in declining years, who
+had already changed his arms for the garb of peace, had unlearned the
+general in the statesman--had become wont to talk to the people,
+to devote himself to harangues, and to love the applause of his own
+theatre. He has not cared to renew his strength, trusting to his old
+fortune. There remains of him but the shadow of his great name."
+
+"The name of Caesar does not loom so large; nor is his character as a
+general so high. But there is a spirit which can content itself with
+no achievements; there is but one feeling of shame--that of not
+conquering; a man determined, not to be controlled, taking his arms
+wherever lust of conquest or anger may call him; a man never sparing
+the sword, creating all things from his own good-fortune trusting
+always the favors of the gods."
+
+    [1] Froude's Caesar, p. 444.
+
+    [2] Ibid., p. 428.
+
+    [3] Ad Att., lib. xiii., 28.
+
+    [4] Ad Att., lib. ix., 10.
+
+    [5] Froude, p. 365.
+
+    [6] Ad Att., lib. ii., 5: "Quo quidem uno ego ab istis
+    capi possum."
+
+    [7] The Cincian law, of which I shall have to speak
+    again, forbade Roman advocates to take any payment for
+    their services. Cicero expressly declares that he has
+    always obeyed that law. He accused others of disobeying
+    it, as, for instance, Hortensius. But no contemporary
+    has accused him. Mr. Collins refers to some books which
+    had been given to Cicero by his friend P[oe]tus. They are
+    mentioned in a letter to Atticus, lib. i., 20; and
+    Cicero, joking, says that he has consulted
+    Cincius--perhaps some descendant of him who made the law
+    145 years before--as to the legality of accepting the
+    present. But we have no reason for supposing that he had
+    ever acted as an advocate for P[oe]tus.
+
+    [8] Virgil, AEneid, i., 150:
+
+     "Ac, veluti magno in populo quum saepe coorta est
+      Seditio, saevitque animis ignobile vulgus;
+      Jamque faces, et saxa volant; furor arma ministrat:
+      Tum, pietate gravem ac meritis si forte virum quem
+      Conspexere, silent, arrectisque auribus adstant;
+      Iste regit dictis animos, et pectora mulcet."
+
+    [9] The author is saying that a history from Cicero
+    would have been invaluable, and the words are "interitu
+    ejus utrum respublica an historia magis doleat."
+
+    [10] Quintilian tells us this, lib. ii., c. 5. The
+    passage of Livy is not extant. The commentators suppose
+    it to have been taken from a letter to his son.
+
+    [11] Velleius Paterculus, lib. ii., c. 34.
+
+    [12] Valerius Maximus, lib. iv., c. 2; 4.
+
+    [13] Pliny, Hist. Nat., lib. vii., xxxi., 30.
+
+    [14] Martial, lib. xiv., 188.
+
+    [15] Lucan, lib. vii., 62:
+
+     "Cunctorum voces Romani maximus auctor
+      Tullius eloquii, cujus sub jure togaque
+      Pacificas saevus tremuit Catilina secures,
+      Pertulit iratus bellis, cum rostra forumque
+      Optaret passus tam longa silentia miles
+      Addidit invalidae robur facundia causae."
+
+    [16] Tacitus, De Oratoribus, xxx.
+
+    [17] Juvenal, viii., 243.
+
+    [18] Demosthenes and Cicero compared.
+
+    [19] Quintilian, xii., 1.
+
+    [20] "Repudiatus vigintiviratus." He refused a position
+    of official value rendered vacant by the death of one
+    Cosconius. See Letters to Atticus, 2,19.
+
+    [21] Florus, lib. iv., 1. In a letter from Essex to Foulke
+    Greville, the writing of which has been attributed to
+    Bacon by Mr. Spedding, Florus is said simply to have
+    epitomized Livy (Life, vol. ii., p. 23). In this I think
+    that Bacon has shorn him of his honors.
+
+    [22] Florus, lib. iv., 1.
+
+    [23] Sallust, Catilinaria, xxiii.
+
+    [24] I will add the concluding passage from the pseudo
+    declamation, in order that the reader may see the nature
+    of the words which were put into Sallust's mouth: "Quos
+    tyrannos appellabas, eorum nunc potentiae faves; qui
+    tibi ante optumates videbantur, eosdem nunc dementes ac
+    furiosos vocas; Vatinii caussam agis, de Sextio male
+    existumas; Bibulum petulantissumis verbis laedis, laudas
+    Caesarem; quem maxume odisti, ei maxume obsequeris.
+    Aliud stans, aliud sedens, de republica sentis; his
+    maledicis, illos odisti; levissume transfuga, neque in
+    hac, neque illa parte fidem habes." Hence Dio Cassius
+    declared that Cicero had been called a turncoat. [Greek:
+    kai automalos onomazeto.]
+
+    [25] Dio Cassius, lib. xlvi., 18: [Greek: pros hen
+    kai auten toiautas epistolas grapheis hoias an grapseien
+    aner skoptoles athuroglorros ... kai proseti kai to
+    stoma autou diaballein epecheirese tosaute aselgeia
+    kai akatharsia para panta ton bion chromenos hoste mede
+    ton sungenestaton apechesthai, alla ten te gunaika
+    proagogeuein kai ten thugatera moicheuein.]
+
+    [26] As it happens, De Quincey specially calls Cicero a
+    man of conscience. "Cicero is one of the very few pagan
+    statesmen who can be described as a thoroughly
+    conscientious man," he says. The purport of his
+    illogical essay on Cicero is no doubt thoroughly hostile
+    to the man. It is chiefly worth reading on account of
+    the amusing virulence with which Middleton, the
+    biographer, is attacked.
+
+    [27] Quintilian, lib. ii., c. 5.
+
+    [28] De Finibus, lib. v., ca. xxii.: "Nemo est igitur, qui
+    non hanc affectionem animi probet atque laudet."
+
+    [29] De Rep., lib. vi., ca. vii.: "Nihil est enim illi
+    principi deo, qui omnem hunc mundum regit, quod quidem
+    in terris fiat acceptius." Tusc. Quest., lib. i., ca. xxx.:
+    "Vetat enim dominans ille in nobis deus."
+
+    [30] De Rep., lib. vi., ca. vii.: "Certum esse in c[oe]lo
+    definitum locum, ubi beati aevo sempiterno fruantur."
+
+    [31] Hor., lib. i., Ode xxii.,
+
+      "Non rura quae; Liris quieta
+       Mordet aqua taciturnus amnis."
+
+    [32] Such was the presumed condition of things at Rome.
+    By the passing of a special law a plebeian might, and
+    occasionally did, become patrician. The patricians had
+    so nearly died out in the time of Julius Caesar that he
+    introduced fifty new families by the Lex Cassia.
+
+    [33] De Orat., lib. ii., ca. 1.
+
+    [34] Brutus, ca. lxxxix.
+
+    [35] It should be remembered that in Latin literature it
+    was the recognized practice of authors to borrow
+    wholesale from the Greek, and that no charge of
+    plagiarism attended such borrowing. Virgil, in taking
+    thoughts and language from Homer, was simply supposed to
+    have shown his judgment in accommodating Greek delights
+    to Roman ears and Roman intellects.
+
+    The idea as to literary larceny is of later date, and
+    has grown up with personal claims for originality and
+    with copyright. Shakspeare did not acknowledge whence he
+    took his plots, because it was unnecessary. Now, if a
+    writer borrow a tale from the French, it is held that he
+    ought at least to owe the obligation, or perhaps even
+    pay for it.
+
+    [36] Juvenal, Sat. x., 122,
+
+      "O fortunatam natam me Consule Romam!
+       Antoni gladios potuit contemnere, si sic
+       Omnia dixisset."
+
+    [37] De Leg., lib. i., ca. 1.
+
+    [38] Life and Times of Henry Lord Brougham, written by
+    himself, vol. i., p. 58.
+
+    [39] I give the nine versions to which I allude in an
+    Appendix A, at the end of this volume, so that those
+    curious in such matters may compare the words in which
+    the same picture has been drawn by various hands.
+
+    [40] Pro Archia, ca. vii.
+
+    [41] Brutus, ca. xc.
+
+    [42] Tacitus, De Oratoribus, xxx.
+
+    [43] Quintilian, lib. xii., c. vi., who wrote about the
+    same time as this essayist, tells us of these three
+    instances of early oratory, not, however, specifying the
+    exact age in either case. He also reminds us that
+    Demosthenes pleaded when he was a boy, and that Augustus
+    at the age of twelve made a public harangue in honor of
+    his grandmother.
+
+    [44] Brutus, ca. xc.
+
+    [45] Brutus, xci.
+
+    [46] Quintilian, lib. xii., vi.: "Quum jam clarum
+    meruisset inter patronos, qui tum erant, nomen, in Asiam
+    navigavit, seque et aliis sine dubio eloquentiae ac
+    sapientiae magistris, sed praecipue tamen Apollonio
+    Moloni, quem Romae quoque audierat, Rhodi rursus
+    formandum ac velut recognendum dedit."
+
+    [47] Brutus, xci.
+
+    [48] The total correspondence contains 817 letters, of
+    which 52 were written to Cicero, 396 were written by
+    Cicero to Atticus, and 369 by Cicero to his friends in
+    general. We have no letters from Atticus to Cicero.
+
+    [49] Quintilian, lib. x., ca. 1.
+
+    [50] Clemens of Alexandria, in his exhortation to the
+    Gentiles, is very severe upon the iniquities of these
+    rites. "All evil be to him," he says, "who brought them
+    into fashion, whether it was Dardanus, or Eetion the
+    Thracian, or Midas the Phrygian." The old story which he
+    repeats as to Ceres and Proserpine may have been true,
+    but he was altogether ignorant of the changes which the
+    common-sense of centuries had produced.
+
+    [51] De Legibus, lib. ii., c. xiv.
+
+    [52] It was then that the foreign empire commenced, in
+    ruling which the simplicity and truth of purpose and
+    patriotism of the Republic were lost.
+
+    [53] The reverses of fortune to which Marius was
+    subjected, how he was buried up to his neck in the mud,
+    hiding in the marshes of Minturnae, how he would have
+    been killed by the traitorous magistrates of that city
+    but that he quelled the executioners by the fire of his
+    eyes; how he sat and glowered, a houseless exile, among
+    the ruins of Carthage--all which things happened to him
+    while he was running from the partisans of Sulla--are
+    among the picturesque episodes of history. There is a
+    tragedy called the _Wounds of Civil War_, written by
+    Lodge, who was born some eight years before Shakspeare,
+    in which the story of Marius is told with some exquisite
+    poetry, but also with some ludicrous additions. The Gaul
+    who is hired to kill Marius, but is frightened by his
+    eyes, talks bad French mingled with bad English, and
+    calls on Jesus in his horror!
+
+    [54] Brutus, ca. xc.
+
+    [55] Florus tells us that there were 2000 Senators and
+    Knights, but that any one was allowed to kill just whom
+    he would. "Quis autem illos potest computare quos in
+    urbe passim quisquis voluit occidit" (lib. iii., ca.
+    21).
+
+    [56] About L487 10_s._ In Smith's Dictionary of Greek and
+    Roman Antiquities the Attic talent is given as being
+    worth L243 15_s._ Mommsen quotes the price as 12,000
+    denarii, which would amount to about the same sum.
+
+    [57] Suetonius speaks of his death. Florus mentions the
+    proscriptions and abdication. Velleius Paterculus is
+    eloquent in describing the horrors of the massacres and
+    confiscation. Dio Cassius refers again and again to the
+    Sullan cruelty. But none of them give a reason for the
+    abdication of Sulla.
+
+    [58] Vol. iii., p. 386. I quote from Mr. Dickson's
+    translation, as I do not read German.
+
+    [59] In defending Roscius Amerinus, while Sulla was
+    still in power, he speaks of the Sullan massacres as
+    "pugna Cannensis," a slaughter as foul, as disgraceful,
+    as bloody as had been the defeat at Cannae.
+
+    [60] Mommsen, vol. iii., p. 385.
+
+    [61] Pro Sexto Roscio, ca. xxi.: "Quod antea causam
+    publicam nullam dixerim." He says also in the Brutus,
+    ca. xc., "Itaque prima causa publica, pro Sex. Roscio
+    dicta." By "publica causa" he means a criminal
+    accusation in distinction from a civil action.
+
+    [62] Pro Publio Quintio, ca. i.: "Quod mihi consuevit in
+    ceteris causis esse adjumento, id quoque in hac causa
+    deficit."
+
+    [63] Pro Publio Quintio, ca. xxi.: "Nolo eam rem
+    commemorando renovare, cujus omnino rei memoriam omnem
+    tolli funditus ac deleri arbitror oportere."
+
+    [64] Pro Roscio, ca. xlix. Cicero says of him that he
+    would be sure to suppose that anything would have been
+    done according to law of which he should be told that it
+    was done by Sulla's order. "Putat homo imperitus morum,
+    agricola et rusticus, ista omnia, quae vos per Sullam
+    gesta esse dicitis, more, lege, jure gentium facta."
+
+    [65] Pro Sexto Roscio, ca. 1.
+
+    [66] Pro Sexto Roscio, ca. xxix.: "Ejusmodi tempus erat,
+    inquit, ut homines vulgo impune occiderentur."
+
+    [67] Pro T. A. Milone, ca. xxi.: "Cur igitur cos
+    manumisit? Metuebat scilicit ne indicarent; ne dolorem
+    perferre non possent."
+
+    [68] Pro T. A. Milone, ca. xxii.: "Heus tu, Ruscio, verbi
+    gratia, cave sis mentiaris. Clodius insidias fecit
+    Miloni? Fecit. Certa crux. Nullas fecit. Sperata
+    libertas."
+
+    [69] Pro Sexto Roscio, ca. xxviii.
+
+    [70] Ibid.
+
+    [71] Ibid., ca. xxxi.
+
+    [72] Pro Sexto Roscio, ca. xlv.
+
+    [73] Pro Sexto Roscio, ca. xlvi. The whole picture of
+    Chrysogonus, of his house, of his luxuries, and his
+    vanity, is too long for quotation, but is worth
+    referring to by those who wish to see how bold and how
+    brilliant Cicero could be.
+
+    [74] They put in tablets of wax, on which they recorded
+    their judgment by inscribing letter, C, A, or
+    NL--Condemno, Absolvo, or Non liquet--intending to show
+    that the means of coming to a decision did not seem to
+    be sufficient.
+
+    [75] Quintilian tells us, lib. x., ca. vii., that Cicero's
+    speeches as they had come to his day had been
+    abridged--by which he probably means only arranged--by
+    Tiro, his slave and secretary and friend. "Nam Ciceronis
+    ad praesens modo tempus aptatos libertus Tiro
+    contraxit."
+
+    [76] Quintilian, lib. xi., ca. iii.: "Nam et toga, et
+    calecus, et capillus, tam nimia cura, quam negligentia,
+    sunt reprehendenda." * * * "Sinistrum brachium eo usque
+    allevandum est, ut quasi normalem illum angulum faciat."
+    Quint., lib. xii., ca. x., "ne hirta toga sit;" don't let
+    the toga be rumpled; "non serica:" the silk here
+    interdicted was the silk of effeminacy, not that silk of
+    authority of which our barristers are proud. "Ne
+    intonsum caput; non in gradus atque annulos comptum." It
+    would take too much space were I to give here all the
+    lessons taught by this professor of deportment as to the
+    wearing of the toga.
+
+    [77] A doubt has been raised whether he was not married
+    when he went to Greece, as otherwise his daughter would
+    seem to have become a wife earlier than is probable. The
+    date, however, has been generally given as it is stated
+    here.
+
+    [78] Tacitus, Annal., xi., 5, says, "Qua cavetur
+    antiquitus, ne quis, ob causam orandam, pecuniam donumve
+    accipiat."
+
+    [79] De Off., lib. i., ca. xlii.: "Sordidi etiam putandi,
+    qui mercantur a mercatoribus, quod statim vendant. Nihil
+    enim proficiunt, nisi admodum mentiantur."
+
+    [80] De Off., lib. i., ca. xlii.: "Primum improbantur ii
+    quaestus, qui in odia hominum incurrunt: ut portitorum
+    ut f[oe]neratorum." The Portitores were inferior
+    collectors of certain dues, stationed at seaports, who
+    are supposed to have been extremely vexatious in their
+    dealings with the public.
+
+    [81] Philipp., 11-16.
+
+    [82] Let any who doubt this statement refer to the fate
+    of the inhabitants of Alesia and Uxellodunum. Caesar did
+    not slay or torture for the sake of cruelty, but was
+    never deterred by humanity when expediency seemed to him
+    to require victims. Men and women, old and young, many
+    or few, they were sacrificed without remorse if his
+    purpose required it.
+
+    [83] Pro Pub. Quintio, ca. xxv.
+
+    [84] See Appendix B, Brutus, ca. xcii., xciii.
+
+    [85] Brutus, ca. xciii.: "Animos hominum ad me dicendi
+    novitate converteram."
+
+    [86] It must be remembered that this advice was actually
+    given when Cicero subsequently became a candidate for
+    the Consulship, but it is mentioned here as showing the
+    manner in which were sought the great offices of State.
+
+    [87] Cicero speaks of Sicily as divided into two
+    provinces, "Quaestores utriusque provinciae." There was,
+    however, but one Praetor or Proconsul. But the island
+    had been taken by the Romans at two different times.
+    Lilybaeum and the west was obtained from the
+    Carthaginians at the end of the first Punic war,
+    whereas, Syracuse was conquered by Marcellus and
+    occupied during the second Punic war.
+
+    [88] Tacitus, Ann., lib. xi., ca. xxii.: "Post, lege
+    Sullae, viginti creati supplendo senatui, cui judicia
+    tradiderat."
+
+    [89] De Legibus, iii., xii.
+
+    [90] Pro P. Sexto, lxv.
+
+    [91] Pro Cluentio, lvi.
+
+    [92] Contra Verrem, Act. iv., ca. xi.: "Ecquae civitas
+    est, non modo in provinciis nostris, verum etiam in
+    ultimis nationibus, aut tam potens, aut tam libera, aut
+    etiam am immanis ac barbara; rex denique ecquis est, qui
+    senatorem populi Romani tecto ac domo non invitet?"
+
+    [93] Contra Verrem, Act. i., ca. xiii.: "Omnia non modo
+    commemorabuntur, sed etiam, expositis certis rebus,
+    agentur, quae inter decem annos, posteaquam judicia ad
+    senatum translata sunt, in rebus judicandis nefarie
+    flagitioseque facta sunt."
+
+    Pro Cluentio, lvi.: "Locus, auctoritas, domi splendor,
+    apud exteras nationes nomen et gratia, toga praetexta,
+    sella curulis, insignia, fasces, exercitus, imperia,
+    provincia."
+
+    [94] Contra Verrem, Act. i., ca. xviii.: "Quadringenties
+    sestertium ex Sicilia contra leges abstulisse." In
+    Smith's Dictionary of Grecian and Roman Antiquities we
+    are told that a thousand sesterces is equal in our money
+    to L8 17_s._ 1_d._ Of the estimated amount of this plunder
+    we shall have to speak again.
+
+    [95] Pro Plancio, xxvi.
+
+    [96] Pro Plancio, xxvi.
+
+    [97] M. du Rozoir was a French critic, and was joined
+    with M. Gueroult and M. de Guerle in translating and
+    annotating the Orations of Cicero for M. Panckoucke's
+    edition of the Latin classics.
+
+    [98] In Verrem Actio Secunda, lib. i., vii.
+
+    [99] Plutarch says that Caecilius was an emancipated
+    slave, and a Jew, which could not have been true, as he
+    was a Roman Senator.
+
+    [100] De Oratore, lib. ii., c. xlix. The feeling is
+    beautifully expressed in the words put into the mouth of
+    Antony in the discussion on the charms and attributes of
+    eloquence: "Qui mihi in liberum loco more majorum esse
+    deberet."
+
+    [101] In Q. Caec. Divinatio, ca. ii.
+
+    [102] Divinatio, ca. iii.
+
+    [103] Ibid., ca. vi.
+
+    [104] Ibid., ca. viii.
+
+    [105] Divinatio, ca. ix.
+
+    [106] Ibid., ca. xi.
+
+    [107] Ibid.
+
+    [108] Ibid., ca. xii.
+
+    [109] Actio Secunda, lib. ii., xl. He is speaking of
+    Sthenius, and the illegality of certain proceedings on
+    the part of Verres against him. "If an accused man could
+    be condemned in the absence of the accuser, do you think
+    that I would have gone in a little boat from Vibo to
+    Velia, among all the dangers prepared for me by your
+    fugitive slaves and pirates, when I had to hurry at the
+    peril of my life, knowing that you would escape if I
+    were not present to the day?"
+
+    [110] Actio Secunda, l. xxi.
+
+    [111] In Verrem, Actio Prima, xvi.
+
+    [112] In Verrem, Actio Prima, xvi.
+
+    [113] We are to understand that the purchaser at the
+    auction having named the sum for which he would do the
+    work, the estate of the minor, who was responsible for
+    the condition of the temple, was saddled with that
+    amount.
+
+    [114] In Verrem, Actio Secunda, lib. ii., vii.
+
+    [115] Ibid., ix.
+
+    [116] Ibid., lib. ii., xiv.
+
+    [117] See Appendix C.
+
+    [118] In Verrem, Actio Secunda, lib. ii., ca. xxxvi.
+
+    [119] Ibid. "Una nox intercesserat, quam iste Dorotheum
+    sic diligebat, ut diceres, omnia inter eos esse
+    communia."--wife and all. "Iste" always means Verres in
+    these narratives.
+
+    [120] These were burning political questions of the
+    moment. It was as though an advocate of our days should
+    desire some disgraced member of Parliament to go down to
+    the House and assist the Government in protecting Turkey
+    in Asia and invading Zululand.
+
+    [121] "Sit in ejus exercitu signifer." The "ejus" was
+    Hortensius, the coming Consul, too whom Cicero intended
+    to be considered as pointing. For the passage, see In
+    Verrem, Actio Secunda, lib. ii., xxxi.
+
+    [122] In Verrem, Actio Secunda, lib. iii., 11.
+
+    [123] "Exegi monumentum aere perennius," said Horace,
+    gloriously. "Sum pius AEneas" is Virgil's expression,
+    put into the mouth of his hero. "Ipse Menaleas," said
+    Virgil himself. Homer and Sophocles introduce their
+    heroes with self-sounded trumpetings:
+
+      [Greek: Eim' Odysseus Daertiades hos pasi doloisi
+      Anthropoisi melo, kai meu kleos ouranon ikei.]
+      Odyssey, book ix., 19 and 20.
+
+      [Greek: Ho pasi kleinos Oidipous kaloumenos.]
+      [OE]dipus Tyrannus, 8.
+
+    [124] Pro Plancio, xxvi.: "Frumenti in summa caritate
+    maximum numerum miseram; negotiatoribus comis,
+    mercatoribus justus, municipibus liberalis, sociis
+    abstinens, omnibus eram visus in omni officio
+    diligentissimus."
+
+    [125] In Verrem, Actio Secunda, lib. iii., ix.: "Is erit
+    Apronius ille; qui, ut ipse non solum vita, sed etiam
+    corpore atque ore significat, immensa aliqua vorago est
+    ac gurges vitiorum turpitudinumque omnium. Hunc in
+    omnibus stupris, hunc in fanorum expilationibus, hunc in
+    impuris conviviis principem adhibebat; tantamque
+    habebat morum similitudo conjunctionem atque concordiam,
+    ut Apronius, qui aliis inhumanus ac barbarus, isti uni
+    commodus ac disertus videretur; ut quem omnes odissent
+    neque videre vellent sine eo iste esse non posset; ut
+    quum alii ne conviviis quidem iisdem quibus Apronius,
+    hic iisdem etiam poculis uteretur, postremo, ut, odor
+    Apronii teterrimus oris et corporis, quem, ut aiunt, ne
+    bestiae quidem ferre possent, uni isti suavis et
+    jucundus videretur. Ille erat in tribunali proximus; in
+    cubiculo socius; in convivio dominus, ac tum maxime,
+    quum, accubante praetextato praetoris filio, in convivio
+    saltare nudus c[oe]perat."
+
+    [126] A great deal is said of the _Cybea_ in this and
+    the last speech. The money expended on it was passed
+    through the accounts as though the ship had been built
+    for the defence of the island from pirates, but it was
+    intended solely for the depository of the governor's
+    plunder.
+
+    [127] In Verrem, Actio Secunda, lib. iv., vii.
+
+    [128] In Verrem, Actio Secunda, lib. iv., lvii.
+
+    [129] In Verrem, Actio Secunda, lib. v., lxvi.: "Facinus
+    est vinciri civem Romanum; scelus verberari; prope
+    parricidium necari; quid dicam in crucem tollere!"
+
+    [130] In Verrem, Actio Secunda, lib. v., lxv.
+
+    [131] In Verrem, Actio Secunda, lib. v., xx.: "Onere suo
+    plane captam atque depressam."
+
+    [132] In Verrem, Actio Secunda, lib. v., xxvi.
+
+    [133] Ibid., xxviii.
+
+    [134] Pro Fonteio, xiii.
+
+    [135] De Oratore, lib. ii., lix.: "Perspicitis, hoc genus
+    quam sit facetum, quam elegans, quam oratorium, sive
+    habeas vere, quod narrare possis, quod tamen, est
+    mendaciunculis aspergendum, sive fingas." Either invent
+    a story, or if you have an old one, add on something so
+    as to make it really funny. Is there a parson, a bishop,
+    an archbishop, who, if he have any sense of humor about
+    him, does not do the same?
+
+    [136] Cicero, Pro Cluentio, l., explains very clearly
+    his own idea as to his own speeches as an advocate, and
+    may be accepted, perhaps, as explaining the ideas of
+    barristers of to-day. "He errs," he says, "who thinks
+    that he gets my own opinions in speeches made in law
+    courts; such speeches are what the special cases
+    require, and are not to be taken as coming from the
+    advocate as his own."
+
+    [137] When the question is discussed, we are forced
+    rather to wonder how many of the great historical doings
+    of the time are not mentioned, or are mentioned very
+    slightly, in Cicero's letters. Of Pompey's treatment of
+    the pirates, and of his battling in the East, little or
+    nothing is said, nothing of Caesar's doings in Spain.
+    Mention is made of Caesar's great operations in Gaul
+    only in reference to the lieutenancy of Cicero's brother
+    Quintus, and to the employment of his young friend
+    Trebatius. Nothing is said of the manner of Caesar's
+    coming into Rome after passing the Rubicon; nothing of
+    the manner of fighting at Dyrrachium and Pharsalia; very
+    little of the death of Pompey; nothing of Caesar's delay
+    in Egypt. The letters deal with Cicero's personal doings
+    and thoughts, and with the politics of Rome as a city.
+    The passage to which allusion is made occurs in the life
+    of Atticus, ca. xvi: "Quae qui legat non multum
+    desideret historiam contextam illorum temporum."
+
+    [138] Jean George Greefe was a German, who spent his
+    life as a professor at Leyden, and, among other
+    classical labors, arranged and edited the letters of
+    Cicero. He died in 1703.
+
+    [139] It must be explained, however, that continued
+    research and increased knowledge have caused the order
+    of the letters, and the dates assigned to them, to be
+    altered from time to time; and, though much has been
+    done to achieve accuracy, more remains to be done. In my
+    references to the letters I at first gave them, both to
+    the arrangement made by Graevius and to the numbers
+    assigned in the edition I am using; but I have found
+    that the numbers would only mislead, as no numbering has
+    been yet adopted as fixed. Arbitrary and even fantastic
+    as is the arrangement of Graevius, it is better to
+    confine myself to that because it has been acknowledged,
+    and will enable my readers to find the letters if they
+    wish to do so. Should Mr. Tyrrell continue and complete
+    his edition of the correspondence, he will go far to
+    achieve the desired accuracy. A second volume has
+    appeared since this work of mine has been in the press.
+
+    [140] The peculiarities of Cicero's character are
+    nowhere so clearly legible as in his dealings with and
+    words about his daughter. There is an effusion of love,
+    and then of sorrow when she dies, which is un-Roman,
+    almost feminine, but very touching.
+
+    [141] I annex a passage from our well known English
+    translation: "The power of the pirates had its
+    foundation in Cilicia. Their progress was the more
+    dangerous, because at first it had been but little
+    noticed. In the Mithridatic war they assumed new
+    confidence and courage, on account of some services
+    which they had rendered the king. After this, the Romans
+    being engaged in civil war at the very gates of their
+    capital, the sea was left unguarded, and the pirates by
+    degrees attempted higher things--not only attacking
+    ships, but islands and maritime towns. Many persons
+    distinguished for their wealth, birth and capacity
+    embarked with them, and assisted in their depredations,
+    as if their employment had been worthy the ambition of
+    men of honor. They had in various places arsenals,
+    ports, and watch-towers, all strongly fortified. Their
+    fleets were not only extremely well manned, supplied
+    with skilful pilots, and fitted for their business by
+    their lightness and celerity, but there was a parade of
+    vanity about them, more mortifying than their strength,
+    in gilded sterns, purple canopies, and plated oars, as
+    if they took a pride and triumphed in their villany.
+    Music resounded, and drunken revels were exhibited on
+    every coast. Here generals were made prisoners; and
+    there the cities which the pirates had seized upon were
+    paying their ransom, to the great disgrace of the Roman
+    power. The number of their galleys amounted to a
+    thousand, and the cities taken to four hundred." The
+    passage is taken from the life of Pompey.
+
+    [142] Florus, lib. iii., 6: "An felicitatem, quod ne una
+    cuidam navis amissa est; an vero perpetuitatem, quod
+    amplius piratae non fuerunt."
+
+    [143] Of the singular trust placed in Pompey there are
+    very many proofs in the history of Rome at this period,
+    but none, perhaps, clearer than the exception made in
+    this favor in the wording of laws. In the agrarian law
+    proposed by the Tribune Rullus, and opposed by Cicero
+    when he was Consul, there is a clause commanding all
+    Generals under the Republic to account for the spoils
+    taken by them in war. But there is a special exemption
+    in favor of Pompey. "Pompeius exceptus esto." It is as
+    though no Tribune dared to propose a law affecting
+    Pompey.
+
+    [144] See Appendix D.
+
+    [145] Asconius Pedianus was a grammarian who lived in
+    the reign of Tiberius, and whose commentaries on
+    Cicero's speeches, as far as they go, are very useful in
+    explaining to us the meaning of the orator. We have his
+    notes on these two Cornelian orations and some others,
+    especially on that of Pro Milone. There are also
+    commentaries on some of the Verrine orations--not by
+    Asconius, but from the pen of some writer now called
+    Pseudo-Asconius, having been long supposed to have come
+    from Asconius. They, too, go far to elucidate much which
+    would otherwise be dark to us.
+
+    [146] Quint., lib. viii., 3. The critic is explaining the
+    effect of ornament in oratory--of that beauty of
+    language which with the people has more effect than
+    argument--and he breaks forth himself into perhaps the
+    most eloquent passage in the whole Institute: "Cicero,
+    in pleading for Cornelius, fought with arms which were
+    as splendid as they were strong. It was not simply by
+    putting the facts before the judges, by talking
+    usefully, in good language and clearly, that he
+    succeeded in forcing the Roman people to acknowledge by
+    their voices and by their hands their admiration; it was
+    the grandeur of his words, their magnificence, their
+    beauty, their dignity, which produced that outburst."
+
+    [147] Orator., lxvii. and lxx.
+
+    [148] De Lege Agraria, ii., 2: "Meis comitiis non
+    tabellam, vindicem tacitae libertatis, sed vocem vivam
+    prae vobis, indicem vestrarum erga me voluntatum ac
+    studiorum tulistis. Itaque me * * * una voce universus
+    populus Romanus consulem declaravit."
+
+    [149] Sall., Conj. Catilinaria, xxi.: "Petere consulatum
+    C. Antonium, quem sibi collegam fore speraret, hominem
+    et familiarem, et omnibus necessitudinibus
+    circumventum." Sallust would no doubt have put anything
+    into Catiline's mouth which would suit his own purpose;
+    but it was necessary for his purpose that he should
+    confine himself to credibilities.
+
+    [150] Cicero himself tells us that many short-hand
+    writers were sent by him--"Plures librarii," as he calls
+    them--to take down the words of the Agrarian law which
+    Rullus proposed. De Lege Agra., ii., 5. Pliny,
+    Quintilian, and Martial speak of these men as Notarii.
+    Martial explains the nature of their business:
+
+      "Currant verba licet, manus est velocior illis;
+          Nondum lingua suum, dextra peregit opus."--xiv., 208.
+
+    [151]Ad Att., ii., 1. "Oratiunculas," he calls them. It
+    would seem here that he pretends to have preserved these
+    speeches only at the request of some admiring young
+    friends. Demosthenes, of course, was the
+    "fellow-citizen," so called in badinage, because
+    Atticus, deserting Rome, lived much at Athens.
+
+    [152] This speech, which has been lost, was addressed to
+    the people with the view of reconciling them to a law in
+    accordance with which the Equites were entitled to
+    special seats in the theatre. It was altogether
+    successful.
+
+    [153] This, which is extant, was spoken in defence of an
+    old man who was accused of a political homicide
+    thirty-seven years before--of having killed, that is,
+    Saturninus the Tribune. Cicero was unsuccessful, but
+    Rabirius was saved by the common subterfuge of an
+    interposition of omens. There are some very fine
+    passages in this oration.
+
+    [154] This has been lost. Cicero, though he acknowledged
+    the iniquity of Sulla's proscriptions, showed that their
+    effects could not now be reversed without further
+    revolutions. He gained his point on this occasion.
+
+    [155] This has been lost. Cicero, in accordance with the
+    practice of the time, was entitled to the government of
+    a province when ceasing to be Consul. The rich province
+    of Macedonia fell to him by lot, but he made it over to
+    his colleague Antony, thus purchasing, if not Antony's
+    co-operation, at any rate his quiescence, in regard to
+    Catiline. He also made over the province of Gaul, which
+    then fell to his lot, to Metellus, not wishing to leave
+    the city. All this had to be explained to the people.
+
+    [156] It will be seen that he also defended Rabirius in
+    his consular year, but had thought fit to include that
+    among his consular speeches. Some doubt has been thrown,
+    especially by Mr. Tyrrell, on the genuineness of
+    Cicero's letter giving the list of his "oratiunculas
+    consulares," because the speeches Pro Murena and Pro
+    Pisone are omitted, and as containing some "rather
+    un-Ciceronian expressions." My respect for Mr. Tyrrell's
+    scholarship and judgment is so great that I hardly dare
+    to express an opinion contrary to his; but I should be
+    sorry to exclude a letter so Ciceronian in its feeling.
+    And if we are to have liberty to exclude without
+    evidence, where are we to stop?
+
+    [157] Corn. Nepo., Epaminondas, I.: "We know that with
+    us" (Romans) "music is foreign to the employments of a
+    great man. To dance would amount to a vice. But these
+    things among the Greeks are not only pleasant but
+    praiseworthy."
+
+    [158] Conj. Catilinaria, xxv.
+
+    [159] Horace, Epis. i., xvii.:
+
+           "Si sciret regibus uti
+       Fastidiret olus qui me notat."
+
+    [160] Pro Murena, xxix.
+
+    [161] Pro Murena, x. This Sulpicius was afterward Consul
+    with M. Marcellus, and in the days of the Philippics was
+    sent as one of a deputation to Antony. He died while on
+    the journey. He is said to have been a man of excellent
+    character, and a thorough-going conservative.
+
+    [162] Pro Murena, xi.
+
+    [163] Ibid., xi.
+
+    [164] Ibid., xii.
+
+    [165] Ibid., xiii.
+
+    [166] Ibid., xi.
+
+    [167] Pro Cluentio, 1.
+
+    [168] De Lege Agraria, ii., 5.
+
+    [169] He alludes here to his own colleague Antony, whom
+    through his whole year of office he had to watch lest
+    the second Consul should join the enemies whom he
+    fears--should support Rullus or go over to Catiline.
+    With this view, choosing the lesser of the two evils, he
+    bribes Antony with the government of Macedonia.
+
+    [170] De Lege Agraria, i., 7 and 8.
+
+    [171] The "jus imaginis" belonged to those whose
+    ancestors was counted an AEdile, a Praetor, or a Consul.
+    The descendants of such officers were entitled to have
+    these images, whether in bronze, or marble, or wax,
+    carried at the funerals of their friends.
+
+    [172] Forty years since, Marius who was also "novus
+    homo," and also, singularly enough, from Arpinum, had
+    been made Consul, but not with the glorious
+    circumstances as now detailed by Cicero.
+
+    [173] De Lege Agraria, ii., 1, 2, and 3.
+
+    [174] See Introduction.
+
+    [175] Pliny the elder, Hist. Nat., lib. vii., ca. xxxi.
+
+    [176] The word is "proscripsisti," "you proscribed him."
+    For the proper understanding of this, the bearing of
+    Cicero toward Antony during the whole period of the
+    Philippics must be considered.
+
+    [177] Catiline, by Mr. Beesly. Fortnightly Review, 1865.
+
+    [178] Pro Murena, xxv.: "Quem omnino vivum illinc exire
+    non oportuerat." I think we must conclude from this that
+    Cicero had almost expected that his attack upon the
+    conspirators, in his first Catiline oration, would have
+    the effect of causing him to be killed.
+
+    [179] AEneid, viii., 668:
+
+                     "Te, Catilina, minaci
+            Pendentem scopulo."
+
+    [180] Velleius Paterculus, lib. ii., xxxiv.
+
+    [181] Juvenal, Sat. ii., 27: "Catilina Cethegum!" Could
+    such a one as Catiline answer such a one as Cethegus?
+    Sat. viii., 232: "Arma tamen vos Nocturna et flammas
+    domibus templisque parastis." Catiline, in spite of his
+    noble blood, had endeavored to burn the city. Sat. xiv.,
+    41: "Catilinam quocunque in populo videas." It is hard
+    to find a good man, but it is easy enough to put your
+    hand anywhere on a Catiline.
+
+    [182] Val Maximus, lib. v., viii., 5; lib. ix., 1, 9;
+    lib. ix., xi., 3.
+
+    [183] Florus, lib. iv.
+
+    [184] Mommsen's History of Rome, book v., chap v.
+
+    [185] I feel myself constrained here to allude to the
+    treatment given to Catiline by Dean Merivale in his
+    little work on the two Roman Triumvirates. The Dean's
+    sympathies are very near akin to those of Mr. Beesly,
+    but he values too highly his own historical judgment to
+    allow it to run on all fours with Mr. Beesly's
+    sympathies. "The real designs," he says, "of the
+    infamous Catiline and his associates must indeed always
+    remain shrouded in mystery. * * * Nevertheless, it is
+    impossible to deny, and on the whole it would be
+    unreasonable to doubt, that such a conspiracy there
+    really was, and that the very existence of the
+    commonwealth was for a moment seriously imperilled." It
+    would certainly be unreasonable to doubt it. But the
+    Dean, though he calls Catiline infamous, and
+    acknowledges the conspiracy, nevertheless give us ample
+    proof of his sympathy with the conspirators, or rather
+    of his strong feeling against Cicero. Speaking of
+    Catiline at a certain moment, he says that he "was not
+    yet hunted down." He speaks of the "upstart Cicero," and
+    plainly shows us that his heart is with the side which
+    had been Caesar's. Whether conspiracy or no conspiracy,
+    whether with or without wholesale murder and rapine, a
+    single master with a strong hand was the one remedy
+    needed for Rome! The reader must understand that
+    Cicero's one object in public life was to resist that
+    lesson.
+
+    [186] Asconius, "In toga candida," reports that
+    Fenestella, a writer of the time of Augustus, had
+    declared that Cicero had defended Catiline; but Asconius
+    gives his reasons for disbelieving the story.
+
+    [187] Cicero, however, declares that he has made a
+    difference between traitors to their country and other
+    criminals. Pro P. Sulla, ca. iii.: "Verum etiam quaedam
+    contagio sceleris, si defendas eum, quem obstrictum esse
+    patriae parricidio suspicere." Further on in the same
+    oration, ca. vi., he explains that he had refused to
+    defend Autronius because he had known Autronius to be a
+    conspirator against his country. I cannot admit the
+    truth of the argument in which Mr. Forsyth defends the
+    practice of the English bar in this respect, and in
+    doing so presses hard upon Cicero. "At Rome," he says,
+    "it was different. The advocate there was conceived to
+    have a much wider discretion than we allow." Neither in
+    Rome nor in England has the advocate been held to be
+    disgraced by undertaking the defence of bad men who have
+    been notoriously guilty. What an English barrister may
+    do, there was no reason that a Roman advocate should not
+    do, in regard to simple criminality. Cicero himself has
+    explained in the passage I have quoted how the Roman
+    practice did differ from ours in regard to treason. He
+    has stated also that he knew nothing of the first
+    conspiracy when he offered to defend Catiline on the
+    score of provincial peculations. No writer has been
+    heavy on Hortensius for defending Verres, but only
+    because he took bribes from Verres.
+
+    [188] Publius Cornelius Sulla, and Publius Autronius
+    P[oe]tus.
+
+    [189] Pro P. Sulla, iv. He declares that he had known
+    nothing of the first conspiracy and gives the reason:
+    "Quod nondum penitus in republica versabar, quod nondum
+    ad propositum mihi finem honoris perveneram, quod mea me
+    ambitio et forensis labor ab omni illa cogitatione
+    abstrahebat."
+
+    [190] Sallust, Catilinaria, xviii.
+
+    [191] Livy, Epitome, lib. ci.
+
+    [192] Suetonius, J. Caesar, ix.
+
+    [193] Mommsen, book v., ca. v., says of Caesar and
+    Crassus as to this period, "that this notorious action
+    corresponds with striking exactness to the secret action
+    which this report ascribes to them." By which he means
+    to imply that they probably were concerned in the plot.
+
+    [194] Sallust tells us, Catilinaria, xlix., that Cicero
+    was instigated by special enemies of Caesar to include
+    Caesar in the accusation, but refused to mix himself up
+    in so great a crime. Crassus also was accused, but
+    probably wrongfully. Sallust declares that an attempt
+    was made to murder Caesar as he left the Senate. There
+    was probably some quarrel and hustling, but no more.
+
+    [195] Sallust, Catilinaria, xxxvii.: "Omnino cuncta
+    plebes, novarum rerum studio, Catilinae incepta
+    probabat." By the words "novarum rerum studio"--by a love
+    of revolution--we can understand the kind of popularity
+    which Sallust intended to express.
+
+    [196] Pro Murena, xxv.
+
+    [197] "Darent operam consules ne quid detrimenti
+    respublica capiat."
+
+    [198] Catilinaria, xxxi.
+
+    [199] Quintilian, lib. xii., 10: "Quem tamen et suorum
+    homines temporum incessere audebant, ut tumidiorem, et
+    asianum, et redundantem."
+
+    [200] Orator., xxxvii.: "A nobis homo audacissimus
+    Catilina in senatu accusatus obmutuit."
+
+    [201] 2 Catilinaria, xxxi.
+
+    [202] In the first of them to the Senate, chap. ix., he
+    declares this to Catiline himself: "Si mea voce
+    perterritus ire in exsilium animum induxeris, quanta
+    tempestas invidiae nobis, si minus in praesens tempus,
+    recenti memoria scelerum tuorum, at in posteritatem
+    impendeat." He goes on to declare that he will endure
+    all that, if by so doing he can save the Republic. "Sed
+    est mihi tanti; dummodo ista privata sit calamitas, et a
+    reipublicae periculis sejungatur."
+
+    [203] Sallust, Catilinaria, xli.: "Itaque Q. Fabio
+    Sangae cujus patrocinio civitas plurimum utebatur rem
+    omnem uti cognoverant aperiunt."
+
+    [204] Horace, Epo. xvi., 6: "Novisque rebus infidelis
+    Allobrox." The unhappy Savoyard has from this line been
+    known through ages as a conspirator, false even to his
+    fellow-conspirators.
+
+    Juvenal, vii., 214: "Rufum qui toties Ciceronem
+    Allobroga dixit." Some Rufus, acting as advocate, had
+    thought to put down Cicero by calling him an
+    Allobrogian.
+
+    [205] The words in which this honor was conferred he
+    himself repeats: "Quod urbem incendiis, caede cives,
+    Italiam bello liberassem"--"because I had rescued the
+    city from fire, the citizens from slaughter, and Italy
+    from war."
+
+    [206] It is necessary in all oratory to read something
+    between the lines. It is allowed to the speaker to
+    produce effect by diminishing and exaggerating. I think
+    we should detract something from the praises bestowed on
+    Catiline's military virtues. The bigger Catiline could
+    be made to appear, the greater would be the honor of
+    having driven him out of the city.
+
+    [207] In Catilinam, iii., xi.
+
+    [208] In Catilinam, ibid., xii.: "Ne mihi noceant
+    vestrum est providere."
+
+    [209] "Prince of the Senate" was an honorary title,
+    conferred on some man of mark as a dignity--at this
+    period on some ex-Consul; it conferred no power. Cicero,
+    the Consul who had convened the Senate, called on the
+    speakers as he thought fit.
+
+    [210] Caesar, according to Sallust, had referred to the
+    Lex Porcia. Cicero alludes, and makes Caesar allude, to
+    the Lex Sempronia. The Porcian law, as we are told by
+    Livy, was passed B.C. 299, and forbade that a Roman
+    should be scourged or put to death. The Lex Sempronia
+    was introduced by C. Gracchus, and enacted that the life
+    of a citizen should not be taken without the voice of
+    the citizens.
+
+    [211] Velleius Paterculus, xxxvi.: "Consulatui Ciceronis
+    non mediocre adjecit decus natus eo anno Divus
+    Augustus."
+
+    [212] In Pisonem, iii.: "Sine ulla dubitatione juravi
+    rempublicam atque hanc urbem mea unius opera esse
+    salvam."
+
+    [213] Dio Cassius tells the same story, lib. xxxvii.,
+    ca. 38, but he adds that Cicero was more hated than ever
+    because of the oath he took: [Greek: kai ho men kai ek
+    toutou poly mallon emisethe.]
+
+    [214] It is the only letter given in the collection as
+    having been addressed direct to Pompey. In two letters
+    written some years later to Atticus, B.C. 49, lib.
+    viii., 11, and lib. viii., 12, he sends copies of a
+    correspondence between himself and Pompey and two of the
+    Pompeian generals.
+
+    [215] Lib. v., 7. It is hardly necessary to explain that
+    the younger Scipio and Laelius were as famous for their
+    friendship as Pylades and Orestes. The "Virtus Scipiadae
+    et mitis sapientia Laeli" have been made famous to us
+    all by Horace.
+
+    [216] These two brothers, neither of whom was remarkable
+    for great qualities, though they were both to be
+    Consuls, were the last known of the great family of the
+    Metelli, a branch of the "Gens Caecilia." Among them had
+    been many who had achieved great names for themselves in
+    Roman history, on account of the territories added to
+    the springing Roman Empire by their victories. There had
+    been a Macedonicus, a Numidicus, a Balearicus, and a
+    Creticus. It is of the first that Velleius Paterculus
+    sings the glory--lib. i., ca. xi., and the elder Pliny
+    repeats the story, Hist. Nat., vii., 44--that of his
+    having been carried to the grave by four sons, of whom
+    at the time of his death three had been Consuls, one had
+    been a Praetor, two had enjoyed triumphal honors, and
+    one had been Censor. In looking through the consular
+    list of Cicero's lifetime, I find that there were no
+    less than seven taken from the family of the Metelli.
+    These two brothers, Metellus Nepos and Celer, again
+    became friends to Cicero; Nepos, who had stopped his
+    speech and assisted in forcing him into exile, having
+    assisted as Consul in obtaining his recall from exile.
+    It is very difficult to follow the twistings and
+    turnings of Roman friendships at this period.
+
+    [217] Velleius Paterculus, lib. ii., ca. xiv. Paterculus
+    tells us how, when the architect offered to build the
+    house so as to hide its interior from the gaze of the
+    world, Drusus desired the man so to construct it that
+    all the world might see what he was doing.
+
+    [218] It may be worth while to give a translation of the
+    anecdote as told by Aulus Gellius, and to point out that
+    the authors intention was to show what a clever fellow
+    Cicero was. Cicero did defend P. Sulla this year; but
+    whence came the story of the money borrowed from Sulla
+    we do not know. "It is a trick of rhetoric craftily to
+    confess charges made, so as not to come within the reach
+    of the law. So that, if anything base be alleged which
+    cannot be denied, you may turn it aside with a joke, and
+    make it a matter of laughter rather than of disgrace, as
+    it is written that Cicero did when, with a drolling
+    word, he made little of a charge which he could not
+    deny. For when he was anxious to buy a house on the
+    Palatine Hill, and had not the ready money, he quietly
+    borrowed from P. Sulla--who was then about to stand his
+    trial, 'sestertium viciens'--twenty million sesterces.
+    When that became known, before the purchase was made,
+    and it was objected to him that he had borrowed the
+    money from a client, then Cicero, instigated by the
+    unexpected charge, denied the loan, and denied also that
+    he was going to buy the house. But when he had bought it
+    and the fib was thrown in his teeth, he laughed
+    heartily, and asked whether men had so lost their senses
+    as not to be aware that a prudent father of a family
+    would deny an intended purchase rather than raise the
+    price of the article against himself."--Noctes Atticae,
+    xii., 12. Aulus Gellius though he tells us that the
+    story was written, does not tell us where he read it.
+
+    [219] I must say this, "pace" Mr. Tyrrell, who, in his
+    note on the letter to Atticus, lib. i., 12, attempts to
+    show that some bargain for such professional fee had
+    been made. Regarding Mr. Tyrrell as a critic always
+    fair, and almost always satisfactory, I am sorry to have
+    to differ from him; but it seems to me that he, too, has
+    been carried away by the feeling that in defending a
+    man's character it is best to give up some point.
+
+    [220] I have been amused at finding a discourse,
+    eloquent and most enthusiastic, in praise of Cicero and
+    especially of this oration, spoken by M. Gueroult at the
+    College of France in June, 1815. The worst literary
+    faults laid to the charge of Cicero, if committed by
+    him--which M. Gueroult thinks to be doubtful--had been
+    committed even by Voltaire and Racine! The learned
+    Frenchman, with whom I altogether sympathize, rises to
+    an ecstasy of violent admiration, and this at the very
+    moment in which Waterloo was being fought. But in truth
+    the great doings of the world do not much affect
+    individual life. We should play our whist at the clubs
+    though the battle of Dorking were being fought.
+
+    [221] Pro P. Sulla, iv.: "Scis me * * * illorum expertem
+    temporum et sermonum fuisse; credo, quod nondum penitus
+    in republica versabar, quod nondum ad propositum mihi
+    finem honoris perveneram. * * * Quis ergo intererat vestris
+    consiliis? Omnes hi, quos vides huic adesse et in primis
+    Q. Hortensius."
+
+    [222] Ad Att., lib. i., 12.
+
+    [223] Ad Att., lib. i., 13.
+
+    [224] Ibid., i., 14.
+
+    [225]Ibid., i., 16: "Vis scire quomodo minus quam soleam
+    praeliatus sum."
+
+    [226] "You have bought a fine house," said Clodius.
+    "There would be more in what you say if you could accuse
+    me of buying judges," replied Cicero. "The judges would
+    not trust you on your oath," said Clodius, referring to
+    the alibi by which he had escaped in opposition to
+    Cicero's oath. "Yes," replied Cicero, "twenty-five
+    trusted me; but not one of the thirty-one would trust
+    you without having his bribe paid beforehand."
+
+    [227] Ad Att., i., 14: "Proxime Pompeium sedebam.
+    Intellexi hominem moveri."
+
+    [228] Ibid.: "Quo modo [Greek: eneperpereusamen], novo
+    auditori Pompeio."
+
+    [229] Mommsen, book v., chap. vi. This probably has been
+    taken from the statement of Paterculus, lib. ii., 40:
+    "Quippe plerique non sine exercitu venturum in urbem
+    adfirmabant, et libertati publicae statuturum arbitrio
+    suo modum. Quo magis hoc homines timuerant, eo gratior
+    civilis tanti imperatoris reditus fuit." No doubt there
+    was a dread among many of Pompey coming back as Sulla
+    had come: not from indications to be found in the
+    character of Pompey, but because Sulla had done so.
+
+    [230] Florus, lib. ii., xix. Having described to us the
+    siege of Numantia, he goes on "Hactenus populus Romanus
+    pulcher, egregius, pius, sanctus atque magnificus.
+    Reliqua seculi, ut grandia aeque, ita vel magis turbida
+    et f[oe]da."
+
+    [231] We have not Pollio's poem on the conspiracy, but
+    we have Horace's record of Pollio's poem:
+
+       Motum ex Metello consule civicum,
+       Bellique causas et vitia, et modos,
+         Ludumque Fortunae, gravesque
+           Principum amicitias, et arma
+       Nondum expiatis uncta cruoribus,
+       Periculosae plenum opus aleae,
+         Tractas, et incedis per ignes
+           Suppositos cineri doloso.--Odes, lib. ii., 1.
+
+    [232] The German index appeared--very much after the
+    original work--as late as 1875.
+
+    [233] Mommsen, lib. v., chap. vi. I cannot admit that
+    Mommsen is strictly accurate, as Caesar had no real
+    idea of democracy. He desired to be the Head of
+    the Oligarchs, and, as such, to ingratiate himself
+    with the people.
+
+    [234] For the character of Caesar generally I would refer
+    readers to Suetonius, whose life of the great man
+    is, to my thinking, more graphic than any that has
+    been written since. For his anecdotes there is
+    little or no evidence. His facts are not all
+    historical. His knowledge was very much less
+    accurate than that of modern writers who have had
+    the benefit of research and comparison. But there
+    was enough of history, of biography, and of
+    tradition to enable him to form a true idea of the
+    man. He himself as a narrator was neither
+    specially friendly nor specially hostile. He has
+    told what was believed at the time, and he has
+    drawn a character that agrees perfectly with all
+    that we have learned since.
+
+    [235] By no one has the character and object of the
+    Triumvirate been so well described as by Lucan, who,
+    bombastic as he is, still manages to bring home to the
+    reader the ideas as to persons and events which he
+    wishes to convey. I have ventured to give in an
+    Appendix, E, the passages referred to, with such a
+    translation in prose as I have been able to produce. It
+    will be found at the end of this volume.
+
+    [236] Plutarch--Crassus: [Greek: kai synestesen ek ton
+    trion ischyn amachon.]
+
+    [237] Velleius Paterculus, lib. ii., 44: "Hoc igitur
+    consule, inter eum et Cn. Pompeium et M. Crassum inita
+    potentiae societas, quae urbi orbique terrarum, nec
+    minus diverso quoque tempore ipsis exitiabilis fuit."
+    Suetonius, Julius Caesar, xix., "Societatem cum utroque
+    iniit." Officers called Triumviri were quite common, as
+    were Quinqueviri and Decemviri. Livy speaks of a
+    "Triumviratus"--or rather two such offices exercised by
+    one man--ix., 46. We remember, too, that wretch whom
+    Horace gibbeted, Epod. iv.: "Sectus flagellis hic
+    triumviralibus." But the word, though in common use, was
+    not applied to this conspiracy.
+
+    [238] Ad Att., lib. ii., 3: "Is affirmabat, illum omnibus
+    in rebus meo et Pompeii consilio usurum, daturumque
+    operam, ut cum Pompeio Crassum conjungeret. Hic sunt
+    haec. Conjunctio mihi summa cum Pompeio; si placet etiam
+    cum Caesare; reditus in gratiam cum inimicis, pax cum
+    multitudine; senectulis otium. Sed me [Greek: katakleis]
+    mea illa commovet, quae est in libro iii.
+
+      "Interea cursus, quos prima a parte juventae
+       Quosque adeo consul virtute, animoque petisti,
+       Hos retine, atque, auge famam laudesque bonorum."
+
+    [239] Homer, Iliad, lib. xii., 243: [Greek: Eis oionos
+    aristos amynesthai peri patres.]
+
+    [240] Middleton's Life of Cicero, vol. i., p. 291.
+
+    [241] Pro Domo Sua, xvi. This was an oration, as the
+    reader will soon learn more at length, in which the
+    orator pleaded for the restoration of his town mansion
+    after his return from exile. It has, however, been
+    doubted whether the speech as we have it was ever made
+    by Cicero.
+
+    [242] Suetonius, Julius Caesar, xx.
+
+    [243] Ad Att., lib. ii., 1: "Quid quaeris?" says Cicero.
+    "Conturbavi Graecam nationem"--"I have put all Greece
+    into a flutter."
+
+    [244] De Divinatione, lib. i.
+
+    [245] Ad Quin. Fratrem, lib. i., 1: "Non itineribus tuis
+    perterreri homines? non sumptu exhauriri? non adventu
+    commoveri? Esse, quocumque veneris, et publice et
+    privatim maximam laetitiam; quum urbs custodem non
+    tyrannum; domus hospitem non expilatorem, recipisse
+    videatur? His autem in rebus jam te usus ipse profecto
+    erudivit nequaquam satis esse, ipsum hasce habere
+    virtutis, sed esse circumspiciendum diligentur, ut in
+    hac custodia provinciae non te unum, sed omnes ministros
+    imperii tui, sociis, et civibus, et reipublicae
+    praestare videare."
+
+    [246] Ad Quin. Fratrem, lib. i., 1: "Ac mihi quidem
+    videntur huc omnia esse referenda iis qui praesunt
+    aliis; ut ii, qui erunt eorum in imperio sint quam
+    beatissimi, quod tibi et esse antiquissimum et ab initio
+    fuisse, ut primum Asiam attigisti, constante fama atque
+    omnium sermone celebratum est. Est autem non modo ejus,
+    qui sociis et civibus, sed etiam ejus qui servis, qui
+    mutis pecudibus praesit, eorum quibus praesit commodis
+    utilitatique servire."
+
+    [247] "Haec est una in toto imperio tuo difficultas."
+
+    [248] Mommsen, book v., ca. 6.
+
+    [249] Mommsen, vol. v., ca. vi.
+
+    [250] Ad Att., lib. ii., 7: "Atque haec, sin velim
+    existimes, non me abs te [Greek: kata to praktikon]
+    quaerere, quod gestiat animus aliquid agere in
+    republica. Jam pridem gubernare me taedebat, etiam quum
+    licebat."
+
+    [251] Ad Att., lib. ii., 8: "Scito Curionem adolescentem
+    venisse ad me salutatum. Valde ejus sermo de Publio cum
+    tuis litteris congruebat, ipse vero mirandum in modum
+    Reges odisse superbos. Peraeque narrabat incensam esse
+    juventutem, neque ferre haec posse." The "reges
+    superbos" were Caesar and Pompey.
+
+    [252] Ad Att., lib. ii., 5: [Greek: Aideomai Troas kai
+    Troadas helkesipeplous].--Il., vi., 442. "I fear what
+    Mrs. Grundy would say of me," is Mr. Tyrrell's homely
+    version. Cicero's mind soared, I think, higher when he
+    brought the words of Hector to his service than does the
+    ordinary reference to our old familiar critic.
+
+    [253] Quint., xii., 1.
+
+    [254] Enc. Britannica on Cicero.
+
+    [255] Ad Att., lib. ii., 9.
+
+    [256] Ibid.: "Festive, mihi crede, et minore sonitu,
+    quam putaram, orbis hic in republica est conversus."
+    "Orbis hic," this round body of three is the
+    Triumvirate.
+
+    [257] We cannot but think of the threat Horace made,
+    Sat., lib. ii., 1:
+
+                                "At ille
+      Qui me commorit, melius non tangere! clamo,
+      Flebit, et insignis tota cantabitur urbe."
+
+    [258] Ad Att., lib. ii., 11: "Da ponderosam aliquam
+    epistolam."
+
+    [259] Josephus, lib. xviii., ca. 5.
+
+    [260] Ad Att., lib. ii., 16.
+
+    [261] Ad Att., lib. ii., 18: "A Caesare valde liberaliter
+    invitor in legationem illam, sibi ut sim legatus; atque
+    etiam libera legatio voti causa datur."
+
+    [262] De Legibus, lib. iii., ca. viii.: "Jam illud apertum
+    prefecto est nihil esse turpius, quam quenquam legari
+    nisi republica causa."
+
+    [263] It may be seen from this how anxious Caesar was to
+    secure his silence, and yet how determined not to screen
+    him unless he could secure his silence.
+
+    [264] Ad Quintum, lib. i., 2.
+
+    [265] Of this last sentence I have taken a translation
+    given by Mr. Tyrrell, who has introduced a special
+    reading of the original which the sense seems to
+    justify.
+
+    [266] Macrobius, Saturnalia, lib. ii., ca. i.: We are told
+    that Cicero had been called the consular buffoon. "And
+    I," says Macrobius, "if it would not be too long, could
+    relate how by his jokes he has brought off the most
+    guilty criminals." Then he tells the story of Lucius
+    Flaccus.
+
+    [267] See the evidence of Asconius on this point, as to
+    which Cicero's conduct has been much mistaken. We shall
+    come to Milo's trial before long.
+
+    [268] The statement is made by Mr. Tyrrell in his
+    biographical introduction to the Epistles.
+
+    [269] The 600 years, or anni DC., is used to signify
+    unlimited futurity.
+
+    [270] Mommsen's History, book v., ca. v.
+
+    [271] [Greek: Automalos onomazeto] is the phrase of
+    Dio Cassius. "Levissume transfuga" is the translation
+    made by the author of the "Declamatio in Ciceronem." If
+    I might venture on a slang phrase, I should say that
+    [Greek: automalos] was a man who "went off on his own
+    hook." But no man was ever more loyal as a political
+    adherent than Cicero.
+
+    [272] Ad Att., ii., 25.
+
+    [273] We do not know when the marriage took place, or
+    any of the circumstances; but we are aware that when
+    Tullia came, in the following year, B.C. 57, to meet her
+    father at Brundisium, she was a widow.
+
+    [274] Suetonius, Julius Caesar, xii.: "Subornavit etiam
+    qui C. Rabirio perduellionis diem diceret."
+
+    [275] "Qui civem Romanum indemnatum perimisset, ei aqua
+    at igni interdiceretur."
+
+    [276] Plutarch tells us of this sobriquet, but gives
+    another reason for it, equally injurious to the lady's
+    reputation.
+
+    [277] Ad Att., lib. iii., 15.
+
+    [278] In Pisonem, vi.
+
+    [279] Ad Att., lib. x., 4.
+
+    [280] We are told by Cornelius Nepos, in his life of
+    Atticus, that when Cicero fled from his country Atticus
+    advanced to him two hundred and fifty sesterces, or
+    about L2000. I doubt, however, whether the flight here
+    referred to was not that early visit to Athens which
+    Cicero was supposed to have made in his fear of Sulla.
+
+    [281] Ad Fam., lib. xiv., iv.: "Tullius to his Terentia,
+    and to his young Tullia, and to his Cicero," meaning his
+    boy.
+
+    [282] Pro Domo Sua, xxiv.
+
+    [283] Ad Quin. Fra., 1, 3.
+
+    [284] The reader who wishes to understand with what
+    anarchy the largest city in the world might still exist,
+    should turn to chapter viii. of book v. of Mommsen's
+    History.
+
+    [285] Ad Att., lib. iii., 12.
+
+    [286] Horace, Epis., lib. ii., 1.
+
+    [287] Ad Att., lib. i., 8.
+
+    [288] Horace, Epis., lib. ii., 11. The translation is
+    Conington's.
+
+    [289] Vell. Pat., lib. i., xiii.
+
+    [290] "Civile;" when Sulla, with Pompey under him, was
+    fighting with young Marius and Cinna.
+
+    [291] "Africanum;" when he had fought with Domitius, the
+    son-in-law of Cinna, and with Hiarbas.
+
+    [292] "Transalpinum;" during his march through Gaul into
+    Spain.
+
+    [293] "Hispaniense;" in which he conquered Sertorius.
+
+    [294] "Servile;" the war with Spartacus, with the slaves
+    and gladiators.
+
+    [295] "Navale Bellum;" the war with the pirates.
+
+    [296] For the full understanding of this oft-quoted line
+    the reader should make himself acquainted with Cato's
+    march across Libya after the death of Pompey, as told by
+    Lucan in his 9th book.
+
+
+END OF VOLUME I.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Life of Cicero, by Anthony Trollope
+
+*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LIFE OF CICERO ***
+
+***** This file should be named 8945.txt or 8945.zip *****
+This and all associated files of various formats will be found in:
+        http://www.gutenberg.org/8/9/4/8945/
+
+Produced by Ted Garvin, Marc D'Hooghe, Steve Whitaker, and
+the PG Online Distributed Proofreading Team
+
+
+Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions
+will be renamed.
+
+Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no
+one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation
+(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without
+permission and without paying copyright royalties.  Special rules,
+set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to
+copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to
+protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark.  Project
+Gutenberg is a registered trademark, and may not be used if you
+charge for the eBooks, unless you receive specific permission.  If you
+do not charge anything for copies of this eBook, complying with the
+rules is very easy.  You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose
+such as creation of derivative works, reports, performances and
+research.  They may be modified and printed and given away--you may do
+practically ANYTHING with public domain eBooks.  Redistribution is
+subject to the trademark license, especially commercial
+redistribution.
+
+
+
+*** START: FULL LICENSE ***
+
+THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE
+PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK
+
+To protect the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting the free
+distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work
+(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase "Project
+Gutenberg"), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full Project
+Gutenberg-tm License (available with this file or online at
+http://gutenberg.org/license).
+
+
+Section 1.  General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic works
+
+1.A.  By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to
+and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property
+(trademark/copyright) agreement.  If you do not agree to abide by all
+the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or destroy
+all copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in your possession.
+If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic work and you do not agree to be bound by the
+terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the person or
+entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph 1.E.8.
+
+1.B.  "Project Gutenberg" is a registered trademark.  It may only be
+used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who
+agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement.  There are a few
+things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works
+even without complying with the full terms of this agreement.  See
+paragraph 1.C below.  There are a lot of things you can do with Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic works if you follow the terms of this agreement
+and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works.  See paragraph 1.E below.
+
+1.C.  The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation ("the Foundation"
+or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection of Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic works.  Nearly all the individual works in the
+collection are in the public domain in the United States.  If an
+individual work is in the public domain in the United States and you are
+located in the United States, we do not claim a right to prevent you from
+copying, distributing, performing, displaying or creating derivative
+works based on the work as long as all references to Project Gutenberg
+are removed.  Of course, we hope that you will support the Project
+Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting free access to electronic works by
+freely sharing Project Gutenberg-tm works in compliance with the terms of
+this agreement for keeping the Project Gutenberg-tm name associated with
+the work.  You can easily comply with the terms of this agreement by
+keeping this work in the same format with its attached full Project
+Gutenberg-tm License when you share it without charge with others.
+
+1.D.  The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern
+what you can do with this work.  Copyright laws in most countries are in
+a constant state of change.  If you are outside the United States, check
+the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this agreement
+before downloading, copying, displaying, performing, distributing or
+creating derivative works based on this work or any other Project
+Gutenberg-tm work.  The Foundation makes no representations concerning
+the copyright status of any work in any country outside the United
+States.
+
+1.E.  Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg:
+
+1.E.1.  The following sentence, with active links to, or other immediate
+access to, the full Project Gutenberg-tm License must appear prominently
+whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg-tm work (any work on which the
+phrase "Project Gutenberg" appears, or with which the phrase "Project
+Gutenberg" is associated) is accessed, displayed, performed, viewed,
+copied or distributed:
+
+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
+
+1.E.2.  If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is derived
+from the public domain (does not contain a notice indicating that it is
+posted with permission of the copyright holder), the work can be copied
+and distributed to anyone in the United States without paying any fees
+or charges.  If you are redistributing or providing access to a work
+with the phrase "Project Gutenberg" associated with or appearing on the
+work, you must comply either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1
+through 1.E.7 or obtain permission for the use of the work and the
+Project Gutenberg-tm trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or
+1.E.9.
+
+1.E.3.  If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is posted
+with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution
+must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any additional
+terms imposed by the copyright holder.  Additional terms will be linked
+to the Project Gutenberg-tm License for all works posted with the
+permission of the copyright holder found at the beginning of this work.
+
+1.E.4.  Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this
+work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg-tm.
+
+1.E.5.  Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this
+electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without
+prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with
+active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project
+Gutenberg-tm License.
+
+1.E.6.  You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary,
+compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including any
+word processing or hypertext form.  However, if you provide access to or
+distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg-tm work in a format other than
+"Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other format used in the official version
+posted on the official Project Gutenberg-tm web site (www.gutenberg.org),
+you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense to the user, provide a
+copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means of obtaining a copy upon
+request, of the work in its original "Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other
+form.  Any alternate format must include the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1.
+
+1.E.7.  Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying,
+performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg-tm works
+unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9.
+
+1.E.8.  You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing
+access to or distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works provided
+that
+
+- You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from
+     the use of Project Gutenberg-tm works calculated using the method
+     you already use to calculate your applicable taxes.  The fee is
+     owed to the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark, but he
+     has agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the
+     Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation.  Royalty payments
+     must be paid within 60 days following each date on which you
+     prepare (or are legally required to prepare) your periodic tax
+     returns.  Royalty payments should be clearly marked as such and
+     sent to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the
+     address specified in Section 4, "Information about donations to
+     the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation."
+
+- You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies
+     you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he
+     does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+     License.  You must require such a user to return or
+     destroy all copies of the works possessed in a physical medium
+     and discontinue all use of and all access to other copies of
+     Project Gutenberg-tm works.
+
+- You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of any
+     money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the
+     electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days
+     of receipt of the work.
+
+- You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free
+     distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm works.
+
+1.E.9.  If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic work or group of works on different terms than are set
+forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing from
+both the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and Michael
+Hart, the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark.  Contact the
+Foundation as set forth in Section 3 below.
+
+1.F.
+
+1.F.1.  Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable
+effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread
+public domain works in creating the Project Gutenberg-tm
+collection.  Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may contain
+"Defects," such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate or
+corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other intellectual
+property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or other medium, a
+computer virus, or computer codes that damage or cannot be read by
+your equipment.
+
+1.F.2.  LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the "Right
+of Replacement or Refund" described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project
+Gutenberg-tm trademark, and any other party distributing a Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all
+liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal
+fees.  YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT
+LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE
+PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH F3.  YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE
+TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE
+LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR
+INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH
+DAMAGE.
+
+1.F.3.  LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a
+defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can
+receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a
+written explanation to the person you received the work from.  If you
+received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium with
+your written explanation.  The person or entity that provided you with
+the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in lieu of a
+refund.  If you received the work electronically, the person or entity
+providing it to you may choose to give you a second opportunity to
+receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund.  If the second copy
+is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing without further
+opportunities to fix the problem.
+
+1.F.4.  Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth
+in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you 'AS-IS' WITH NO OTHER
+WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO
+WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTIBILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE.
+
+1.F.5.  Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied
+warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of damages.
+If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement violates the
+law of the state applicable to this agreement, the agreement shall be
+interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or limitation permitted by
+the applicable state law.  The invalidity or unenforceability of any
+provision of this agreement shall not void the remaining provisions.
+
+1.F.6.  INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the
+trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone
+providing copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in accordance
+with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the production,
+promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works,
+harmless from all liability, costs and expenses, including legal fees,
+that arise directly or indirectly from any of the following which you do
+or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this or any Project Gutenberg-tm
+work, (b) alteration, modification, or additions or deletions to any
+Project Gutenberg-tm work, and (c) any Defect you cause.
+
+
+Section  2.  Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg-tm
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm is synonymous with the free distribution of
+electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of computers
+including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers.  It exists
+because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations from
+people in all walks of life.
+
+Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the
+assistance they need, are critical to reaching Project Gutenberg-tm's
+goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg-tm collection will
+remain freely available for generations to come.  In 2001, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure
+and permanent future for Project Gutenberg-tm and future generations.
+To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation
+and how your efforts and donations can help, see Sections 3 and 4
+and the Foundation web page at http://www.pglaf.org.
+
+
+Section 3.  Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive
+Foundation
+
+The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non profit
+501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the
+state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal
+Revenue Service.  The Foundation's EIN or federal tax identification
+number is 64-6221541.  Its 501(c)(3) letter is posted at
+http://pglaf.org/fundraising.  Contributions to the Project Gutenberg
+Literary Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent
+permitted by U.S. federal laws and your state's laws.
+
+The Foundation's principal office is located at 4557 Melan Dr. S.
+Fairbanks, AK, 99712., but its volunteers and employees are scattered
+throughout numerous locations.  Its business office is located at
+809 North 1500 West, Salt Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887, email
+business@pglaf.org.  Email contact links and up to date contact
+information can be found at the Foundation's web site and official
+page at http://pglaf.org
+
+For additional contact information:
+     Dr. Gregory B. Newby
+     Chief Executive and Director
+     gbnewby@pglaf.org
+
+
+Section 4.  Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg
+Literary Archive Foundation
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm depends upon and cannot survive without wide
+spread public support and donations to carry out its mission of
+increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be
+freely distributed in machine readable form accessible by the widest
+array of equipment including outdated equipment.  Many small donations
+($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt
+status with the IRS.
+
+The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating
+charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United
+States.  Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a
+considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up
+with these requirements.  We do not solicit donations in locations
+where we have not received written confirmation of compliance.  To
+SEND DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any
+particular state visit http://pglaf.org
+
+While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we
+have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition
+against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who
+approach us with offers to donate.
+
+International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make
+any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from
+outside the United States.  U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff.
+
+Please check the Project Gutenberg Web pages for current donation
+methods and addresses.  Donations are accepted in a number of other
+ways including checks, online payments and credit card donations.
+To donate, please visit: http://pglaf.org/donate
+
+
+Section 5.  General Information About Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works.
+
+Professor Michael S. Hart is the originator of the Project Gutenberg-tm
+concept of a library of electronic works that could be freely shared
+with anyone.  For thirty years, he produced and distributed Project
+Gutenberg-tm eBooks with only a loose network of volunteer support.
+
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks are often created from several printed
+editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the U.S.
+unless a copyright notice is included.  Thus, we do not necessarily
+keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition.
+
+
+Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search facility:
+
+     http://www.gutenberg.org
+
+This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm,
+including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary
+Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to
+subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks.
diff --git a/8945.zip b/8945.zip
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..df4bea6
--- /dev/null
+++ b/8945.zip
diff --git a/LICENSE.txt b/LICENSE.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6312041
--- /dev/null
+++ b/LICENSE.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,11 @@
+This eBook, including all associated images, markup, improvements,
+metadata, and any other content or labor, has been confirmed to be
+in the PUBLIC DOMAIN IN THE UNITED STATES.
+
+Procedures for determining public domain status are described in
+the "Copyright How-To" at https://www.gutenberg.org.
+
+No investigation has been made concerning possible copyrights in
+jurisdictions other than the United States. Anyone seeking to utilize
+this eBook outside of the United States should confirm copyright
+status under the laws that apply to them.
diff --git a/README.md b/README.md
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..621633b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/README.md
@@ -0,0 +1,2 @@
+Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for
+eBook #8945 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/8945)
diff --git a/old/7lcc110.zip b/old/7lcc110.zip
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..cb008c8
--- /dev/null
+++ b/old/7lcc110.zip
diff --git a/old/7lcc110.zip.20030828 b/old/7lcc110.zip.20030828
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..cb008c8
--- /dev/null
+++ b/old/7lcc110.zip.20030828
diff --git a/old/8lcc110.zip b/old/8lcc110.zip
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..62021ca
--- /dev/null
+++ b/old/8lcc110.zip
diff --git a/old/8lcc110.zip.20030828 b/old/8lcc110.zip.20030828
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..62021ca
--- /dev/null
+++ b/old/8lcc110.zip.20030828