proscriptions, and in the presence of those who had carried them out and
profited by them. We can imagine the effect his words must have
produced. They expressed the secret feelings of all, they relieved the
public conscience, forced to keep silence, and humiliated by its
silence. Thus the democratic party showed the most lively sympathy, from
that time, for the eloquent young man who protested so courageously
against a hateful rule. The remembrance of this preserved the popular
favour for him so faithfully even to the time of his consulship. Every
time he sought an office the citizens hastened in crowds to the Campus
Martius to record their votes for him. No politician of that time, and
there were many more eminent than he, so easily reached the highest
dignities. Cato suffered more than one check, Caesar and Pompey needed
coalitions and intrigues to succeed. Cicero is almost the only one whose
candidatures succeeded the first time, and who never had to recur to the
means usually required for success. In the midst of those scandalous
bargains which gave honours to the richest, notwithstanding those
deeprooted traditions which seemed to reserve them for the noblest,
Cicero, who had no claims of birth and but a small fortune, always
defeated all the rest. He was appointed quaestor, aedile; he obtained
the urban praetorship, which was the most honourable; he attained the
consulship the first time he sought for it, as soon as the law permitted
him to aspire to it, and none of these dignities cost anything either to
his honour or his fortune.
It is worthy of remark, that when he was appointed praetor he had not
delivered any political speech. Up to the age of forty years he was only
what we call an advocate, and had not felt the need of being anything
else. Forensic eloquence then led to everything; a few brilliant
successes before the tribunals were sufficient to carry a man to public
dignities, and nobody thought of asking Cicero for any other proof of
his capacity for public business, when they were about to commit the
highest interests of his country to his charge, and to invest him with
the supreme authority. However, if this long time passed at the bar was
not detrimental to his political career, I think it caused some injury
to his talents. All the reproaches we may address to the advocate of
to-day, wrongly, no doubt, were well deserved by the advocate of those
times. It may be said of him with truth, that he took all cases
indifferently, that he changed his opinion with each suit, that he used
all his art in and made his fame by finding good reasons for supporting
every sophism. The young man who devoted himself to oratory in the
ancient schools, never heard it said that it was necessary to be
convinced, and proper only to speak conscientiously. He was taught that
there are different kinds of cases, those which are honest and those
which are not so (_genera causarum sunt honestum, turpe_, etc.).[43] It
was not thought necessary to add that the latter were to be avoided. On
the contrary, by exaggerating the merit of success in these, he acquired
the taste for undertaking them by preference. After he had been taught
how to defend and save the guilty, he was, without hesitation, also
taught how to bring discredit on an honest man. Such was the education
received by the pupil of the rhetoricians, and when he had quitted their
schools he did not lack opportunity of applying their precepts. For
instance, he did not make the mistake of being moderate and restrained
in his attacks. By constraining himself to be just he would have
deprived himself of an element of success with that fickle and
passionate mob which applauded satirical portraits and violent
invective. He was not more prejudiced in favour of truth than of
justice. It was a precept of the schools to invent, even in criminal
causes, racy and imaginary details that diverted the audience (_causam
mendaciunculis adspergere_).[44] Cicero quotes with great commendation
some of these agreeable little lies which perhaps cost the honour or the
life of some unfortunate people who were unlucky enough to have too
witty opponents, and as he had himself a fertile imagination in this
way, he did not stint himself in having recourse to this easy means of
success. Nothing was more indifferent to the ancient advocate than being
inconsistent with himself. It was said that the orator Antonius never
would write any of his speeches, lest some one should take it into his
head to compare his late with his present opinion. Cicero had not these
scruples. He contradicted himself all his life, and was never uneasy
about it. One day, when he too openly stated the contrary to what he had
formerly upheld, as he was pressed to explain these sudden changes, he
answered without perturbation: “You are mistaken if you think that you
find the expression of our personal opinions in our speeches; they are
the language of the cause and the case, and not that of the man and the
orator.”[45] This at least is a sincere avowal; but how much do the
orator and the man not lose by thus suiting their language to
circumstances! They learnt to be careless of putting order and
consistency in their lives, to dispense with sincerity in their
opinions, and conviction in their speech, to make the same expenditure
of talent for untruth as for truth, to consider only the needs of the
moment, and the success of the case in hand. These are the lessons that
the bar of that age taught Cicero. He remained at it too long, and when
he quitted it at forty to make his first essay in political oratory, he
could not shake off the bad habits acquired there.
Does this mean that Cicero should be struck off the list of political
orators? If this name is given to every man whose speech has some
influence on the affairs of his country, who sways the mob, or convinces
honest people, it seems difficult to refuse it to Cicero. He knew how to
talk to the multitude and make himself listened to. At times he mastered
it in its most furious outbursts. He made it accept and even applaud
opinions contrary to its preferences. He seemed to drag it out of its
apathy, and to call up in it for a short time an appearance of energy
and patriotism. He is not to blame if his successes were not followed
up, if after these grand triumphs of eloquence brute force remained
master. At least he did with his words all that words could then do. I
admit, however, that what was wanting in his character was wanting also
in his political eloquence. It is nowhere sufficiently resolute,
decided, practical. It is too much taken up with itself, and not enough
with the questions it is treating. It does not attack them boldly on
their salient points. It is involved in pompous phrases, instead of
trying to speak that clear and precise language which is the language of
public business. When we examine it closely, and begin to analyze it, we
find that it is chiefly composed of a good deal of rhetoric and a little
philosophy. All those agreeable and smart arguments, all those artifices
of debate, and also all that ostentation of pathos that we find in it,
come from rhetoric. Philosophy has furnished those grand commonplaces
developed with talent, but not always germane to the subject. There is
too much artifice and method about it. A concise and simple statement
would be more suitable to the discussion of affairs than these
subtleties and emotions; these long philosophical tirades would be
advantageously replaced by a clear and judicious exposition of the
orator’s principles and of the general ideas that regulate his conduct.
Unfortunately, as I have said, Cicero preserved, on reaching the
rostrum, the habits he had acquired at the bar. He attacks, with the
arguments of an advocate, that agrarian law, so honest, moderate, and
wise, which was proposed by the tribune Rullus. In the fourth
Catilinarian Oration he had to discuss this question, one of the gravest
that can be placed before a deliberative assembly, namely, how far is it
permitted to deviate from legality in order to save one’s country? He
has not even approached it. It is painful to see how he hangs back from
it, how he flies from and avoids it, to develop small reasons and lose
himself in a vulgar pathos. The grave and serious kind of eloquence
evidently was not that which Cicero preferred, and in which he felt most
at ease. If you wish to know the real tendency of his talents, read,
immediately after the fourth Catilinarian Oration, the speech for
Muraena, delivered at the same time. There is none more agreeable in the
collection of his speeches, and we wonder how a man who was consul, and
who had then so many affairs on his hands, found his mind sufficiently
free to joke with so much ease and point; the truth is, there he was in
his element. Accordingly, although he was consul or consular, he
returned to the bar as often as he could. It was to oblige his friends,
he said. I think that he wished still more to please himself; he appears
happy, and his animation and wit expand so freely, when he has some
agreeable and lively case to plead. Not only did he never miss an
opportunity of appearing before the judges, but as much as possible he
threw his political discourses into the form of ordinary pleadings.
Everything turned into personal questions with him. The discussion of
ideas usually leaves him cold. He had to contend against some one in
order to let us see him at his best. The finest speeches he delivered in
the Forum or the senate are eulogies or invectives. In them he is
unrivalled; in them, according to one of his expressions, his eloquence
rises and triumphs; but however fine invectives and eulogies may be,
they are not altogether our ideal of political eloquence, and we demand
something else of it now-a-days. All that can be said in justification
of Cicero’s speeches is, that they were perfectly appropriate to his
time, and that their character is explained by the circumstances in
which they were delivered. Eloquence did not then guide the state as in
the best times of the republic. Other influences had replaced it; in the
elections, money and the intrigues of the candidates, in out-door
discussions, the occult and terrible power of the popular societies, and
above all the army, which, since Sulla, raised or overthrew every
government. Eloquence feels itself powerless in the midst of these
forces which overpower it. How can it still preserve the commanding
accent, the imperious and resolute tone of one who knows his power? Need
it appeal to reason and logic, and try and force itself upon men’s
convictions by a close and forcible argument, when it knows that the
questions it is treating are decided otherwise? M. Mommsen maliciously
remarks, that in most of his great political speeches Cicero pleads
causes already victorious. When he published the Verrine Orations, the
laws of Sulla on the composition of the tribunals had just been
abolished. He well knew that Catiline had decided to leave Rome when he
pronounced the first Catilinarian Oration, in which he so feelingly
adjures him to go away. The second Philippic, which seems so bold when
we think of it as spoken to the face of the all-powerful Antony, was
only made public at the moment when Antony was flying to Cisalpine Gaul.
Of what use then were all these fine speeches? They did not cause
decisions to be taken, since these decisions were already taken; but
they caused them to be accepted by the multitude, they stirred public
opinion and excited it in their favour: this was something. It was
necessary to accept the facts of the situation; speech no longer
governed, eloquence could no longer hope to direct events, but it acted
on them indirectly, it tried to produce those great movements of opinion
that prepare or complete them; “it does not secure votes and acts, it
arouses the emotions.”[46] If this moral effect is the only end it had
in view at the time, Cicero’s eloquence, by its copiousness and
splendour, by its brilliancy and pathos, was well calculated to attain
it.
At first he had put his eloquence at the service of the popular party;
we have seen that it was in the ranks of this party that he made his
first political appearance; but although he faithfully served it for
seventeen years, I am inclined to think that he did not always do so
heartily. The excesses of the aristocratic government threw him towards
democracy, but he must have found democracy not much wiser, especially
when it was victorious. It sometimes gave him terrible clients to
defend. He had to plead the cause of factious and seditious persons who
were always troubling the public peace. One day he even pleaded, or was
on the point of pleading, for Catiline. It is probable that all this was
painful to him, and that the violent excesses of democracy tempted him
more than once to separate from it. Unfortunately he did not know where
to go if he left it, and if the plebeians offended him by their
violence, the aristocracy, by its arrogance and prejudices, did not any
more attract him. Since in existing parties he did not find any which
exactly corresponded to his convictions, and which altogether suited his
disposition, he had no other resource than to form one for himself. This
is what he tried to do. When he felt that the brilliancy of his
eloquence, the offices he had filled, the popularity that surrounded
him, made him an important person, in order to assure his future, to
take a higher and more permanent position in the republic, to free
himself from the requirements of his former protectors, in order not to
be forced to stretch out his hand to his old enemies, he sought to
create a new party, composed of the moderate men of all parties, and of
which he was to be the head. But he very well understood that he could
not create this party in a moment and produce it from nothing. It was
necessary first to find a nucleus around which the new recruits that he
expected should group themselves. He thought he had found it in that
class of citizens to which he belonged by his birth, and who were called
the knights.
Rome always lacked what we now call the middle and citizen class. In
proportion as the small farmers left their friends to go and live in the
city, and “as those hands which had worked at the corn and the vine were
only occupied in applauding at the theatre and the circus,”[47] the gap
became greater between the opulent aristocracy which possessed almost
all the public wealth, and that indigent and famished people that was
continually recruited from the slaves. The sole intermediaries were the
knights. This name, at the time we are considering, was not only used to
describe the citizens to whom the state gave a horse (_equites equo
publico_), and who voted separately in the elections; it was also given
to all those who possessed the equestrian income qualification, that is
to say, those whose fortune exceeded 400,000 sesterces (£3200). We may
well believe that the nobility behaved haughtily to these obscure
plebeians whom chance or economy had enriched; it kept these parvenus at
a distance; dealt out its disdain to them as liberally as to the poor
people of the plebs, and obstinately closed the entrance to public
dignities to them. When Cicero was appointed consul it was thirty years
since a new man, whether knight or plebeian, had attained the
consulship. Removed from political life by the jealousy of the great
nobles, the knights were obliged to turn their energies elsewhere.
Instead of wasting time in useless candidatures, they busied themselves
in making their fortunes. When Rome had conquered the world, it was the
knights especially who profited by these conquests. They formed an
industrious and enlightened class, they were already in easy
circumstances, and able to make loans, and thought they could speculate
in the conquered countries for their own profit. Penetrating wherever
the Roman arms were carried, they became merchants, bankers, farmers of
the taxes, and amassed immense riches. As Rome was no longer the Rome of
the Curii and the Cincinnati, and dictators were no longer taken from
the plough, their wealth gave them consideration and importance. From
that time they were spoken of with more respect. The Gracchi, who wished
to make them allies in the struggle they were waging with the
aristocracy, caused it to be decided that the judges should be taken
from their ranks. Cicero went further; he tried to make them the
foundation of the great moderate party he wished to create. He knew that
he could count on their devotedness. He belonged to them by birth; he
had shed over them the splendour that surrounded his name; he had never
neglected to defend their interests before the tribunals or in the
senate. He also reckoned that they would be grateful to him for wishing
to augment their importance and call them to a great political future.
All these combinations of Cicero seemed at first to succeed very
happily; but, to tell the truth, the merit of this success was chiefly
due to circumstances. This great coalition of the moderates upon which
he congratulated himself as his finest work, almost succeeded under the
influence of fear. A social revolution seemed imminent. The dregs of all
the old parties, wretched plebeians and ruined nobles, old soldiers of
Marius, and proscribers of Sulla, had united under the leadership of a
bold and able chief, who promised them a new distribution of public
wealth. The existence of this party compelled those whom it threatened
to unite also in order to defend themselves. Fear was more efficacious
than the finest speeches would have been, and in this sense we may say
that Cicero was perhaps more indebted for this union which he regarded
as the main point of his policy to Catiline rather than to himself.
Community of interests, then, brought about, at least for a time, a
reconciliation of the aims of various classes. The richest, and
consequently the most seriously endangered, namely the knights, were
naturally the soul of the new party. By their side the honest plebeians
who did not wish political reforms to be exaggerated took their stand,
as well as those nobles whose threatened pleasures drew them from their
apathy, who would have allowed the republic to perish without defending
it, but who did not wish their lampreys and fish-ponds touched. The new
party had not to look about long for a head. Pompey was in Asia, Caesar
and Crassus secretly favoured the conspiracy. Besides these there was no
greater name than Cicero’s. This explains that great wave of public
opinion which carried him into the consulship. His election was almost a
triumph. I shall say nothing of his consulship, of which he has had the
misfortune to speak too much himself. I do not wish to underrate the
victory that he gained over Catiline and his accomplices. The danger was
serious; even his enemy Sallust affirms it. Behind the plot were hidden
ambitious politicians ready to profit by events. Caesar knew well that
the reign of anarchy could not last long. After some pillaging and
massacres, Rome would have recovered from her surprise, and honest
folks, being driven to activity by despair, would have again got the
upper hand. Only it is probable that then one of those reactions that
usually follow great anarchy would have taken place. The remembrance of
the ills from which they had escaped with such difficulty would have
disposed many people to sacrifice the liberty which exposed them to so
many perils, and Caesar held himself ready to offer them the sovereign
remedy of absolute power. By cutting the evil at the root, by surprising
and punishing the conspiracy before it broke out, Cicero perhaps delayed
the advent of monarchical government at Rome for fifteen years. He was
not wrong, then, in boasting of the services he rendered at that time to
his country’s liberty, and we must acknowledge, with Seneca, that if he
has praised his consulship without measure he has not done so without
reason.[48]
Coalitions of this kind, unfortunately, seldom long survive the
circumstances that give rise to them. When the interests that a common
danger had united began to feel themselves secure, they recommenced
their old quarrels. The plebeians, who were no longer afraid, felt their
old animosity against the nobility revive. The nobles began again to
envy the wealth of the knights. As to the knights, they had none of
those qualities that were necessary to make them the soul of a political
party, as Cicero had hoped. They were more occupied with their private
affairs than with those of the republic. They had not the strength of
numbers, like the plebeians, and were wanting in those great traditions
of government that maintained so long the authority of the nobility.
Their only guiding principle was that instinct usual with men of large
fortunes, which led them to prefer order to liberty. They sought, before
all things, a strong power which could defend them, and Caesar had in
the end no more devoted followers than they. In this break-up of his
party, Cicero, who could not stand alone, asked himself on which side he
ought to place himself. The fright that Catiline had given him, the
presence of Caesar and Crassus in the ranks of the democracy, prevented
his return to that party, and he finally attached himself to the
nobility, notwithstanding his repugnance. From the date of his
consulship he resolutely turned towards this party. We know how the
democracy avenged itself for what it considered a betrayal. Three years
after it condemned its old head, now become its enemy, to exile, and
only consented to recall him to cast him at the feet of Caesar and
Pompey, whose union had made them masters of Rome.[49]
III.
The gravest political crisis that Cicero passed through, after the great
struggles of his consulship, was certainly that which terminated in the
fall of the Roman republic at Pharsalia. We know that he did not
willingly engage in this terrible conflict, of which he foresaw the
issue, and that he hesitated for nearly a year before deciding on his
course. It is not surprising that he hesitated so long. He was no longer
young and obscure as when he pleaded for Roscius. He had a high position
and an illustrious name that he did not wish to compromise, and a man
may be allowed to reflect before he risks fortune, glory, and perchance
life on a single cast. Besides, the question was not so simple nor the
right so clear as they seem at first sight. Lucan, whose sympathies are
not doubtful, yet said that it could not be known on which side justice
lay, and this obscurity does not seem to be altogether dissipated,
since, after eighteen centuries of discussion, posterity has not yet
succeeded in coming to an agreement. It is curious that, among us, in
the seventeenth century, at the height of monarchical government, the
learned all pronounced against Caesar without hesitation. Magistrates of
the high courts, men cautious and moderate by their offices and
character, who approached the king and were not sparing of flattery,
took the liberty of being Pompeians and even furious Pompeians in
private. “The First President,” says Guy-Patin, “is so much on Pompey’s
side, that one day he expressed his joy that I was so, I having said to
him, in his fine garden at Bâville, that if I had been in the senate
when Julius Caesar was killed, I would have given him the twenty-fourth
stab.” On the contrary, it is in our own days, in a democratic epoch,
after the French Revolution, and in the name of the revolution and the
democracy, that the side of Caesar has been upheld with the greatest
success, and that the benefit humanity has reaped from his victory has
been set in its clearest light.