city where traditions were so much respected the ideas of parents were
inherited as well as their property or their name, and it was a point of
honour to follow their politics faithfully; but in Cicero’s time these
customs were beginning to decay. The oldest families had no scruple in
failing in their hereditary engagements. At that time many names which
had become illustrious by defending popular interests are found in the
senatorial party, and the most audacious demagogue of that time bore the
name of Clodius. Besides, Cicero would never at any time have found
political direction in his birth. He belonged to an unknown family, he
was the first of his race to engage in public affairs, and the name he
bore did not commit him in advance to any party. In fact, he was not
born at Rome. His father lived in one of those little country municipia
of which the wits readily made fun, because doubtful Latin was spoken
and fine manners were not well known in them, but which, none the less,
were the strength and honour of the Republic. That rude but brave and
temperate people who inhabited the neglected cities of Campania, Latium,
and the Sabine country, and among whom the habits of rural life had
preserved something of the ancient virtue,[30] was in reality the Roman
people. That which filled the streets and squares of the great city,
spent its time in the theatre, took part in the riots of the Forum, and
sold its votes in the Campus Martius, was only a collection of freedmen
and foreigners among whom only disorder, intrigue, and corruption could
be learnt. Life was more honest and healthy in the municipia. The
citizens who inhabited them remained for the most part strangers to the
questions that were debated in Rome, and the rumour of public affairs
did not reach them. They were sometimes seen on the Campus Martius or
the Forum, when it was a question of voting for one of their
fellow-citizens, or of supporting him by their presence before the
tribunals; but usually they troubled themselves little about exercising
their rights, and stayed at home. They were none the less devoted to
their country, jealous of their privileges, even when they made no use
of them, proud of their title of Roman citizens, and much attached to
the Republican Government that had given it them. For them the Republic
had preserved its prestige because, living at a distance, they saw less
of its weaknesses and always recalled its ancient glory. Cicero’s
childhood was spent in the midst of these rural populations, as backward
in their ideas as in their manners. He learnt from them to love the past
more than to know the present. This was the first impression and the
first teaching he received from the places as from the people among whom
his early years were passed. Later, he spoke with emotion of that humble
house that his father had built near the Liris, and which recalled the
house of the old Curius[31] by its stern simplicity. I fancy that those
who lived in it must have thought themselves carried back a century, and
that in causing them to live among the memorials of the past, it gave
them the inclination and taste for old-fashioned things. If Cicero owed
anything to his birth it was this. He may have gained in his family
respect for the past, love of his country, and an instinctive preference
for the Republican Government, but he found in it no precise tradition,
no positive engagement with any party. When he entered political life he
was obliged to decide for himself, a great trial for an irresolute
character! And in order to choose among so many conflicting opinions it
was necessary early to study and reflect.
Cicero has embodied the results of his reflections and studies in
political writings, of which the most important, _The Republic_, has
only reached us in a very imperfect state. What remains of it shows that
he is here, as everywhere else, a fervent disciple of the Greeks. He
attaches himself by preference to Plato, and his admiration for him is
so strong that he often almost makes us think that he is content with
translating him. In general Cicero does not appear to care much for the
glory of originality. This is almost the only vanity he lacks. In his
correspondence there is a singular admission on this subject, which has
been freely used against him. In order to make his friend Atticus
understand how his works cost him so little trouble, he says: “I only
furnish the words, of which I have no lack”;[32] but Cicero, contrary to
his usual custom, calumniates himself here. He is not such a servile
translator as he wishes to make believe, and the difference between him
and Plato is great, especially in his political works. Their books bear,
indeed, the same title, but as soon as they are opened we perceive that
in reality they are quite unlike. It is the characteristic of a
speculative philosopher like Plato to consider the absolute end in
everything. If he wants to form a constitution, instead of studying the
people to be governed by it, he begins with some principle which reason
lays down, and follows it up with inflexible rigour to its logical
consequences. Thus he succeeds in forming one of those political systems
where everything is bound and held together, and which by their
admirable unity delight the mind of the sage who studies them as the
regularity of a fine building pleases the eye of those who look at it.
Unfortunately this kind of constitution, thought out in solitude and
cast all of a piece, is difficult of application. When it comes to be
put in practice unexpected resistance crops up on all sides. National
traditions, character, and recollections, all those social forces which
have been overlooked, will not submit to the severe laws imposed on
them. It is then perceived that these things cannot be moulded at will,
and since they absolutely refuse to give way, one must be prepared to
modify this constitution which seemed so fine when it was not put into
use. But here again the difficulty is great. It is not easy to change
anything in these compact and logical systems, where everything is so
skilfully arranged that one piece being disturbed throws the rest out of
gear. Besides, philosophers are naturally imperious and absolute; they
do not like to be thwarted. To avoid that opposition that provokes them,
to escape as much as possible the demands of reality, they imitate the
Athenian of whom Aristophanes speaks, who, despairing of finding here
below a republic to suit him, went to look for one in the clouds. They
also build castles in the air, ideal republics governed by imaginary
laws. They frame admirable constitutions, but they have the defect of
not applying to any particular country because they are made for the
whole human race.
Cicero did not act thus. He knew the public he addressed; he knew that
that grave and sensible race, so quick to seize the practical side of
things, would be ill-satisfied with these fancies, and so he does not
lose himself in these dreams of the ideal and the absolute. He does not
presume to make laws for the universe; he is thinking especially of his
own country and his own times, and although he appears to be drawing up
the plan of a perfect republic, that is to say, one that cannot exist,
it is plain that his eyes are fixed on a constitution which does really
exist. The following are very nearly his political theories. Of the
three forms of government usually distinguished, none altogether pleases
him when it is isolated. I need not speak of the absolute government of
a single man, he died in order to oppose that.[33]
The other two, government by all or by a few, that is to say democracy
and aristocracy, do not seem to him faultless either. It is difficult to
be quite contented with the aristocracy when one has not the advantage
of belonging to a great family. The Roman aristocracy, notwithstanding
the great qualities it displayed in the conquest and government of the
world, was supercilious and exclusive like others. The checks it had
suffered for a century, its visible decline, and the feeling it must
have had of its approaching end, far from curing its pride, rendered it
more intractable. Prejudices seem to become narrower and more inflexible
when they have but a short time to live. We know how our _émigrés_, face
to face with a victorious revolution, used up their last strength in
foolish struggles for precedence. In the same way the Roman nobility, at
the moment when the power was slipping from it, seemed to make a point
of exaggerating its defects, and of discouraging by its disdain the
respectable people who offered themselves to defend it. Cicero felt
himself drawn towards it by his taste for refinement of manners and
elegant pleasures; but he could not endure its insolence. Thus he always
kept up the ill-will of the discontented plebeian against it, even while
serving it. He knew very well that his birth was not overlooked, and
that he was called an upstart (_homo novus_), and in return he was never
tired of jesting about those fortunate people who do not need to have
any merit, who do not require to take trouble, and to whom the highest
places in the republic come while they are sleeping (_quibus omnia
populi romani beneficia dormientibus deferuntur_).[34]
But if aristocracy pleased him little, he liked popular government still
less. It is the worst of all, he said, anticipating Corneille,[35] and
in saying so he followed the opinion of the greater number of the Greek
philosophers, his masters, who have almost all shown a great aversion to
democracy. They were not only kept aloof from the multitude by the
nature of their studies, pursued in silence and solitude, but they
carefully shunned it lest they should partake of its errors and
prejudices. Their constant care was to keep themselves outside and above
it. The pride that this isolation nourished in them prevented them
seeing an equal in a man of the people, a stranger to those studies they
were so proud of. Thus the supremacy of numbers, which gives the same
importance to the unlearned as to the sage, was distasteful to them.
Cicero says positively that equality understood in this way is the
greatest inequality, _ipsa aequitas iniquissima est_.[36] This was not
the only nor even the greatest reproach that the Greek philosophers, and
Cicero with them, threw on democracy. They thought it was naturally
restless and turbulent, the enemy of meditation, and that it does not
give that leisure to the learned and the sage which is needful for the
works they are projecting. When Cicero thought of popular government, he
had in his mind only wrangles and faction-fights. He recalled the
plebeian riots and the stormy scenes of the Forum. He fancied he heard
those threatening complaints of the debtors and the needy which had
troubled the repose of the rich for three hundred years. How could any
one apply himself amidst this turmoil to studies which require peace and
quietness? The pleasures of the mind are interrupted every moment in
this reign of violence, which constantly drags people from the
tranquillity of their library into the public streets. This tumultuous
and unstable life was ill suited to such a firm friend of study, and if
the arrogance of the nobles sometimes threw him towards the popular
party, dislike of violence and noise did not allow him to remain in it.
What form of government then seemed to him the best? That which unites
them all in a just equilibrium—he says so very plainly in his
_Republic_. “I should wish that there be in the state a supreme and
royal power, that another part be reserved for the authority of the
chief citizens, and that certain things be left to the judgment and will
of the people.”[37] Now this mixed and limited government is not,
according to him, an imaginary system, like the republic of Plato. It is
in actual existence and working; it is that of his own country. This
opinion has been much contested. M. Mommsen thinks it agrees as little
with philosophy as with history. Taking it strictly, it is certainly
more patriotic than true. It would be going very far to consider the
Roman constitution as a faultless model, and to close our eyes to its
defects at the very moment when it perished through those very defects;
yet it must be admitted that, with all its imperfections, it was one of
the wisest of ancient times, and that none, perhaps, had made so many
efforts to satisfy the two great needs of society—order and liberty. Nor
can it be denied that its chief merit consisted in its effort to unite
and reconcile the different forms of government, notwithstanding their
obvious antagonisms. Polybius had perceived this before Cicero, and it
derives this merit from its origin and the way in which it was formed.
The constitution of Greece had almost all been the work of one man, the
Roman constitution was the work of time. That skilful balance of powers
that Polybius admired so much, had not been contrived by one foreseeing
mind. We do not find in the early times of Rome a single legislator who
regulated in advance the part each social element was to play in the
general combination; these elements combined by themselves. The
seditions of the plebeians, the desperate struggles of the tribunate
with the patricians, which terrified Cicero, had contributed more than
all the rest to complete that constitution that he admired. After a
struggle of nearly two hundred years, when the opposing forces perceived
that they were not able to destroy each other, they resigned themselves
to unite, and from the efforts they made to agree together there
resulted a government, imperfect doubtless—can there be a perfect
one?—but which is none the less the best, perhaps, of the ancient world.
We remember, of course, that Cicero did not bestow this praise on the
Roman constitution as it was in his time. His admiration went further
back. He recognized that it had been profoundly modified since the time
of the Gracchi, but he thought that before it had undergone these
alterations it was irreproachable. Thus the studies of his riper age
carried him back to those first impressions of his childhood, and
strengthened his love of ancient times and his respect for ancient
customs. As he advanced in life all his mistakes and all his misfortunes
threw him back to that time. The more the present was sad and the future
threatening the more he looked back with regret on the past. If he had
been asked in what time he would have wished to have been born, I think
he would have unhesitatingly chosen the period that followed the Punic
wars, that is to say, the moment when Rome, proud of her victory,
confident in the future and dreaded by the world, caught a glimpse for
the first time of the beauties of Greece, and began to feel the charm of
letters and the arts. Cicero considers this Rome’s best time, and places
in it by preference the scene of his dialogues. He would certainly have
liked to live among those great men whom he causes to speak so well, in
the company of Scipio, Fabius, and Cato the Elder, by the side of
Lucilius and Terence; and in this illustrious group, the personage whose
life and career would most have tempted him, he that he would have
wished to be, if a man could choose his time and order his destiny, was
the wise and learned Laelius.[38] To unite, like him, a high political
situation to the cultivation of literature, to add to the supreme
authority of eloquence some military successes, which the greatest
preachers of pacific triumphs do not disdain, to reach the highest
dignities of the republic in quiet and orderly times, and after an
honourable life to enjoy a respected old age—this was Cicero’s ideal.
What regrets and sadness does he not experience, when he wakes from this
fine dream to the disappointments of reality, and instead of living in a
tranquil republic, and in free intercourse with the Scipios, he must be
the rival of Catiline, the victim of Clodius, and the subject of Caesar.
Cicero’s temperament, I think, had still more to do with his political
preferences than his birth or his reflections. There is no more to learn
about the weaknesses of his character; they have been laid bare with
delight, they have even been wilfully exaggerated, and since Montaigne
it is the usual thing to laugh at them. I need not repeat, then, what
has been said so often, that he was timid, hesitating, and irresolute. I
admit with everybody that nature made him a man of letters rather than a
politician, but I do not think that this admission does him so much harm
as might be thought. The mind of the man of letters is often more
perfect, more comprehensive, broader than that of the politician, and it
is precisely this breadth that cramps and thwarts him when he undertakes
public affairs. We ask ourselves what qualities are necessary for a
statesman; would it not be wiser to seek those it is good for him to
lack, and does not political capacity show itself sometimes in its
limitations and exclusions? A man of action who ought to decide quickly
may be hampered by the number of contradictory reasons a too close and
penetrating view of things may present to him. A too vivid imagination,
showing him many plans at once, prevents him fixing on any.
Determination often comes from narrowness of mind, and is one of the
greatest virtues in a politician. A very sensitive conscience, by making
him too particular in the choice of his allies, would deprive him of
powerful support. He must distrust those generous impulses which lead
him to do justice even to his enemies: in the furious struggle for power
a man runs the risk of disarming himself and allowing an advantage to be
taken if he has the misfortune to be just and tolerant. There is nothing
that may not become a danger for him, even to that natural uprightness,
the first quality of a statesman. If he is too sensitive to the excesses
and acts of injustice of his party he will serve it feebly, if his
fidelity is to be unshaken he must not only excuse, he should be able to
shut his eyes to them. These are some of the imperfections of heart and
mind by which he gains his successes. If it be true, as I believe it is,
that the politician often succeeds in the government of a state through
his defects, and that the literary man fails by his very qualities, it
is paying the latter almost a compliment to say he is not fit for the
management of affairs.
We may say then without discrediting Cicero, that he was not altogether
fit for public life. The causes which made him an incomparable writer
did not allow him to be a good politician. That openness to impressions,
that delicate and irritable sensitiveness, the principal sources of his
literary talent, did not leave him sufficiently master of his will.
Particular events had too great a hold on him, and a man must be able to
detach himself from these in order to control them. His versatile and
fertile imagination, by drawing his attention to all sides at once,
rather incapacitated him for forming well-connected plans. He could not
delude himself enough about men or enterprises, and thus he was subject
to sudden fits of irresolution. He often boasted of having foreseen and
predicted the future. It was certainly not in his position of augur, but
by a kind of troublesome perspicacity, that showed him the consequences
of events, and the bad ones rather than the good. On the nones of
December, when he executed Catiline’s accomplices, he did not forget the
vengeance to which he exposed himself, and he foresaw his exile: that
day then, notwithstanding the irresolution he has been reproached with,
he had more courage than another who in a moment of excitement would not
have seen the danger. One cause of his inferiority and weakness was that
he was moderate, moderate by constitution rather than principle, that is
to say, with that nervous and irritable impatience which at last employs
violence to defend moderation. In political struggles all excess can
seldom be avoided. Usually parties are unjust in their complaints when
they are beaten, cruel in their reprisals when they conquer, and ready
to do without scruple, as soon as they are able, what they blame in
their enemies. If any in the victorious party perceive they are going
too far and dare to say so, they inevitably irritate everybody against
them. They are accused of timidity and vacillation, they are called weak
and changeable; but is this reproach well deserved? Did Cicero
contradict himself when, after defending the unfortunate men whom the
aristocracy oppressed under Sulla, he defended, thirty years later, the
victims of the democracy under Caesar? Was he not, on the contrary, more
consistent than those who, after bitterly complaining of being exiled,
exiled their enemies as soon as they had the power? We must, however,
admit that if this lively sense of justice is honourable in a private
man it may become dangerous in a politician. Parties do not like those
who refuse to join in their excesses, and in the midst of general
licence set up the claim of alone remaining within bounds. It was
Cicero’s misfortune not to have that firm resolution which fixes a man
in his opinions, and to pass from one opinion to another, because he saw
clearly the good and evil of all. A man must be very self-reliant to try
and do without others. This isolation takes for granted a decision and
energy that were wanting in Cicero. If he had resolutely attached
himself to one party he would have found in it traditions and fixed
principles, firm friends and steady leading, and need only have allowed
himself to be led. On the other hand, by endeavouring to walk alone he
risked making all the rest his enemies while he himself had no clearly
marked out line of conduct. A glance at the chief events of his
political life is sufficient to show that this was the origin of a part
of his misfortunes and his faults.
II.
What I have just said of Cicero’s character explains his early political
opinions. He first appeared in the Forum under the government of Sulla.
The aristocracy was then all-powerful, and strangely abused its power.
Having been conquered for a moment by Marius its reprisals had been
terrible. Tumultuous and indiscriminate massacres could not appease its
rage. Applying its cold and orderly spirit to murder itself, it had
invented proscription, which was only another way of organizing
assassination. After having thus satisfied its vengeance it began to
strengthen its authority. It had dispossessed the richest municipia of
Italy of their property, excluded the knights from the tribunals,
lessened the privileges of the popular comitia, deprived the tribunes of
the right of intervention, that is, it had levelled everything around
itself. When it had broken down all resistance by the death of its
enemies, and concentrated all power in itself, it solemnly declared that
the revolution was ended, that legal government would recommence, and
that “killing would cease after the kalends of June.” Notwithstanding
these pompous declarations, massacres still continued for a long time.
Assassins, protected by the freedmen of Sulla, who shared the profits
with them, went out by night into the dark and crooked streets of the
old city, even to the foot of the Palatine. They murdered rich men
returning home, and under some pretext or other obtained their property
from the courts of justice, no one daring to complain. Such was the
government under which men lived at Rome when Cicero pleaded his first
causes. A moderate man like him, to whom excess was distasteful, must
have had a horror of this violence. An aristocratic tyranny did not suit
him better than a popular tyranny. Before this abuse of authority that
the nobility allowed itself he felt himself naturally drawn to aid the
democracy, and he began his career in the ranks of its defenders.
He made a bold and splendid beginning. In the midst of that silent
terror that the memory of the proscriptions kept up, he dared to speak
out, and the universal silence gave a louder echo to his words. His
political importance dates from the defence of Roscius. This unfortunate
man, whose property had been first taken, and who had then been accused
of murdering his father, could find no defender. Cicero undertook his
defence. He was young and unknown, two great advantages in undertaking
these bold strokes, for obscurity diminishes the danger which a man
runs, and youth prevents the seeing it. He had no trouble in proving the
innocence of his client, who was accused without evidence; but this
success was not enough for him. It was known that one of the most
powerful freedmen of Sulla, the rich and voluptuous Chrysogonus, was the
hidden mover of the accusation. No doubt he thought the dread his name
inspired was a sufficient protection against the boldness of the
defence. Cicero dragged him into the case. Traces of the dismay that
seized the audience when they heard this dreaded name are perceptible in
his speech. The accusers were dumfoundered, the multitude remained
silent. The young orator alone seemed tranquil and self-possessed. He
smiled, he joked, he dared to jeer at those terrible men whom no one
else dared look in the face, because in doing so they thought of the two
thousand heads of knights and senators they had cut off. He does not
altogether respect the master himself. That surname, “the happy,” that
his flatterers had given him gave rise to a pun. “What man is _happy_
enough,” says he, “not to have some rascal in his train?”[39] This
rascal is no other than the all-powerful Chrysogonus. Cicero does not
spare him. He depicts his vulgar luxury and arrogance. He shows him
heaping up in his house on the Palatine all the precious objects that he
had taken from his victims, annoying the neighbourhood with the noise of
his singers and musicians, “or hovering about the Forum with his hair
well combed and shining with unguents.”[40] More serious accusations are
mingled with these jests. The word proscriptions is sometimes pronounced
in this speech, the memory and impression they have left is found
everywhere. We feel that the speaker, who has seen them, has his mind
full of the subject, and that the horror that he feels and that he
cannot master prevents him keeping silence whatever danger there may be
in speaking. This generous emotion shows itself every moment, in spite
of the reticence the neighbourhood of the proscribers imposes. Speaking
of their victims, he dares to say that they have been cruelly murdered,
though it was usual to attribute to them every kind of crime. He holds
up to public scorn and hatred the wretches who have enriched themselves
by these massacres, and with a successful pun calls them “cut-heads and
cut-purses.”[41] He then demands formally that an end should be put to
these proceedings, of which humanity was ashamed; “otherwise,” he adds,
“it would be better to go and live among wild beasts than to remain in
Rome.”[42]