the end of Sulla’s rule, at the time of his first oratorical successes.
His wife, Terentia, belonged to a rich and distinguished family. She
brought him in dowry, according to Plutarch,[94] 120,000 drachmae
(£4440), and we see that she possessed houses in Rome, besides a forest
near Tusculum.[95] It was an advantageous marriage for a young man just
beginning political life with more talent than fortune. Cicero’s
correspondence does not give a very good impression of Terentia. We
imagine her as an economical and orderly, but sharp and disagreeable
housewife, with whom it was difficult to live at ease. She did not agree
very well with her brother-in-law Quintus, and still less with Pomponia
her sister-in-law, who, however, did not agree with anybody. She had
that influence over her husband that a determined and obstinate woman
always has over a careless and irresolute mind. For a long time Cicero
left her absolute mistress of the household, he was very glad to shift
on to somebody else those occupations that did not suit him. She was not
without influence on his political life. She advised him to take
energetic measures at the time of the great consulship, and later she
embroiled him with Clodius, from dislike to Clodia, whom she suspected
of wishing to allure him. As no gain came amiss to her, she succeeded in
entangling him in some financial affairs, that Atticus himself, who was
not over scrupulous, did not think very honourable; but there her power
ended. She seems to have remained a stranger, and perhaps to have been
indifferent to her husband’s literary glory. In none of Cicero’s works,
in which the names of his daughter, his brother, and his son recur so
frequently, is there any mention of his wife. Terentia had no influence
on his mind. He never confided to her his private opinions on the most
serious affairs of life; he never admitted her to share in his opinions
and beliefs. We have a curious proof of this in his correspondence.
Terentia was devout, and devout to excess. She consulted soothsayers,
she believed in prodigies, and Cicero did not take the trouble to cure
her of this eccentricity. He seems even, somewhere, to make a singular
distribution of labours between her and himself; he shows her
respectfully serving the gods, while he is occupied in working for
men.[96] Not only did he not disturb her devotion, but he showed a
consideration for her which surprises us. When he was about to start for
Pompey’s camp, he wrote to her: “At last I am free from that uneasiness
and suffering that I experienced, and which caused you so much concern.
The day after my departure I recognized the cause. During the night I
threw off pure bile, and felt myself relieved as if some god had been my
doctor. Evidently it was Apollo and Aesculapius. I beg you to return
thanks to them with your usual piety and zeal.”[97] This is strange
language in the mouth of that sceptic who wrote the treatise _On the
Nature of the Gods_; but Cicero was, no doubt, one of those people, like
Varro and many others, who while they make little use themselves of
religious practices, think that they are not bad for the common people
and for women. There has survived a whole book of letters from Cicero to
Terentia, which contains the history of his household. What strikes one
on opening it is that, as we get further on, the letters become shorter,
the last are no more than short notes. And not only does the length of
the letters diminish, but their tone is no longer the same, and marks of
affection become more and more rare. We may then conclude that this
affection was not of the kind that increases with time; that common
life, which strengthens true personal unions, enfeebled this one.
Instead of being strengthened, it was worn out by length of time. The
earlier letters show an incredible passion, and this in spite of the
fact that Cicero had been married nearly twenty years; but he was then
very unfortunate, and it seems that misfortune makes people more tender,
and that families feel the need of drawing closer when heavy blows fall
on them. Cicero had just been condemned to exile. He departed very
sorrowfully from Rome, where he knew that his house was burnt, his
friends persecuted, his family ill-treated. Terentia had behaved very
energetically, she had suffered for her husband, and suffered with
courage. On learning the manner in which she had been treated, Cicero
wrote to her despairingly: “How wretched I am! And must a woman so
virtuous, so honourable, so gentle, so devoted, be thus tormented for my
sake!”[98] “Be assured, he tells her elsewhere, that I have nothing
dearer than you. At this moment I think I see you, and cannot restrain
my tears!”[99] He added with still more effusion, “Oh, my life, I would
wish to see you again, and die in your arms!”[100] The correspondence
then ceases for six years. It recommences at the time Cicero left Rome,
to go and govern Cilicia, but the tone is very much changed. In the
single letter remaining to us of this date, affection is replaced by
business. It has to do with a legacy that had fallen in very opportunely
for Cicero’s fortunes, and of the means of turning it to the best
account. It is true he still calls Terentia his very dear and
much-desired wife, _suavissima atque optatissima_, but these words have
the appearance of polite phrases. However, he shows a great desire to
see her again, and asks her to come as far as she can and wait for
him.[101] She went as far as Brundusium, and, by a lucky chance, she
entered the town at the same time that her husband arrived in the
harbour; they met and embraced on the Forum. It was a happy moment for
Cicero. He returned with the title of _imperator_ and the hope of a
triumph; he found his family united and joyous. Unfortunately the civil
war was just about to break out. During his absence parties had broken
with each other; they were about to come to blows, and immediately after
his arrival Cicero was obliged to make choice between them, and to take
his side. This war not only injured his political position, it was fatal
to his private happiness. When the correspondence recommences, after
Pharsalia, it becomes extremely matter-of-fact. Cicero returns to Italy,
and lands again at Brundusium, no longer triumphant and happy, but
vanquished and desperate. This time he does not wish to see his wife
again, although he never had more need of consolation. He keeps her at a
distance, and that without much ceremony. “If you come, he tells her, I
do not see how you can be useful to me.”[102] What makes this answer
more cruel is, that, at the same time, he sent for his daughter, and
consoled himself with her conversation. As to his wife she gets nothing
more from him than short notes, and he has the courage to tell her that
he does not make them longer because he has nothing to say.[103] At the
same time he refers her to Lepta, Trebatius, Atticus, and Sicca, to
learn what decisions he has taken. This shows clearly enough that she no
longer enjoyed his confidence. The only mark of interest he still gives
her is to ask her, from time to time, to take care of her health, a
superfluous recommendation, since she lived more than a hundred years!
The last letter he addressed to her is just what a man would write to
his steward to give an order. “I expect to be at Tusculum the 7th or 8th
of the month, he says; be careful to prepare everything. I shall,
perhaps, have several persons with me, and very likely we shall remain
some time. Let the bath be ready, and let nothing be wanting that is
necessary to comfort and health.”[104] A few months afterwards, the
separation which this tone foreshadows, took place between the couple.
Cicero divorced Terentia after more than thirty years of marriage, and
when they had children and grandchildren.
What motives drove him to this disagreeable extremity? Probably we do
not know them all. Terentia’s disagreeable temper must have often caused
those little quarrels in the household which, repeated continually, end
by wearing out the most steadfast affection. About the time that Cicero
was recalled from exile, and a very few months after he had written
those passionate letters of which I have spoken, he said to Atticus: “I
have some domestic troubles of which I cannot write to you,” and added,
so that he might be understood: “My daughter and my brother love me
still.”[105] We must think that he had good reason to complain of his
wife, to leave her thus out of the list of persons by whom he thought
himself loved. It has been suspected that Terentia was jealous of the
affection Cicero showed to his daughter. This affection was somewhat
excessive and so exclusive as possibly to wound her, and she was not a
woman to endure this without complaint. We may believe that these
dissensions prepared and led up to the divorce, but they were not the
final cause of it. The motive was more prosaic and vulgar. Cicero
justified it by the waste and misuse of his money by his wife, and
several times he accused her of having ruined him for her own benefit.
One of the most curious characteristics of that age was that the women
appear as much engaged in business and as interested in speculations as
the men. Money is their first care. They work their estates, invest
their funds, lend and borrow. We find one among Cicero’s creditors, and
two among his debtors. Only, as they could not always appear themselves
in these financial undertakings, they had recourse to some obliging
freedman, or some shady business man, who watched their interests and
profited by their gains. Cicero, in his speech for Caecina, coming
across a character of this sort, whose business was to devote themselves
to the fortune of women, and often to make their own at their expense,
depicts him in these terms: “There is no man one finds oftener in
ordinary life. He is the flatterer of women, the advocate of widows, a
pettifogging lawyer by profession, a lover of quarrels, a constant
attendant at trials, ignorant and stupid among men, a clever and learned
lawyer among women, expert in alluring by the appearance of a false zeal
and a hypocritical friendship, eager to render services sometimes useful
but rarely faithful.”[106] He was a marvellous guide for women tormented
with the desire of making a fortune; so Terentia had one of these men
about her, her freedman, Philotimus, a clever man of business, but not
very scrupulous, who had succeeded at this trade, since he was rich and
himself possessed slaves and freedmen. In early days Cicero often made
use of him, doubtless at the request of Terentia. It was he who got for
him at a low price some of the property of Milo when he was exiled. It
was a profitable piece of business, but not in very good taste, and
Cicero, who felt it to be so, speaks of it with some shame. On his
departure for Cilicia he left the administration of part of his property
to Philotimus, but he was not long in repenting of it. Philotimus, like
the steward of a great house, paid less attention to his master’s
interests than to his own. He kept for himself the profits he had made
on the property of Milo, and on Cicero’s return presented him an account
in which he figured as his creditor for a considerable amount. “He is a
marvellous thief!”[107] said Cicero, in a rage. At this time his
suspicions did not go beyond Philotimus; when he returned from Pharsalia
he saw clearly that Terentia was his accomplice. “I have found my
household affairs, said he to a friend, in as bad a state as those of
the republic.”[108] The distress in which he found himself at Brundusium
made him distrustful. He looked more closely into his accounts, a thing
that was not usual with him, and it was not difficult for him to
discover that Terentia had often deceived him. At one time she had
retained sixty thousand sesterces[109] (£480) out of her daughter’s
dowry. This was a handsome profit, but she was not negligent of small
gains. Her husband caught her one day pocketing two thousand sesterces
(£16) out of a sum he had asked her for.[110] This rapacity completed
the irritation of Cicero, whom other causes no doubt had soured and hurt
for a long time. He resigned himself to the divorce, but not without
sorrow. We do not break with impunity the bonds that habit, in the
absence of affection, ought to draw closer. At the moment of separation,
after so many happy days have been passed together, so many ills
supported in common, there must always be some memory which troubles us.
What adds to the sadness of these painful moments is, that when we wish
to withdraw and isolate ourselves in our sorrow, business people arrive;
we must defend our interests, reckon and discuss with these people.
These discussions, which had never suited Cicero, made him then suffer
more than usual. He said to the obliging Atticus, when asking him to
undertake them for him: “The wounds are too recent, I could not touch
them without making them bleed.”[111] And as Terentia continued making
difficulties, he wished to put an end to the discussion by giving her
all she asked. “I would rather,” he wrote, “have cause to complain of
her than become discontented with myself.”[112]
We can well understand that the wags did not fail to make merry on the
subject of this divorce. It was a just retaliation after all, and Cicero
had too often laughed at others to expect to be spared himself.
Unfortunately he gave them, a short time after, a new opportunity of
amusing themselves at his expense. Notwithstanding his sixty-three years
he thought of marrying again, and he chose a very young girl, Publilia,
whom her father, when dying, confided to his guardianship. A marriage
between guardian and ward is a real stage marriage, and the guardian
generally has the worst of it. How did it happen that Cicero, with his
experience of the world and of life, allowed himself to be drawn into
this imprudent step? Terentia, who had to revenge herself, repeated
everywhere that he had fallen violently in love with this young girl;
but his secretary, Tiro, asserted that he had only married her in order
to pay his debts with her fortune, and I think we must believe Tiro,
although it is not usual that, in this kind of marriage, the elder is
also the poorer. As might be foreseen, trouble was not long in appearing
in the household. Publilia, who was younger than her step-daughter, did
not agree with her, and, it appears, could not conceal her joy when she
died. This was an unpardonable crime in Cicero’s eyes, and he refused to
see her again. It is strange that this young woman, far from accepting
with pleasure the liberty that he wished to restore to her, made great
efforts to re-enter the house of this old man who divorced her,[113] but
he was inflexible. This time he had had enough of marriage, and it is
said that, when his friend Hirtius came to offer him the hand of his
sister, he refused her, under the pretence that it is difficult to
attend at the same time to a wife and to philosophy. It was a wise
answer, but he would have done well to have thought of it sooner.
III.
Cicero had two children by Terentia. His daughter Tullia was the elder.
He had brought her up in his own way, initiating her into his studies,
and giving her the taste for those intellectual things that he loved so
much himself, and which, it appears, his wife did not care for. “I find
in her,” he said, “my features, my words, my mind;”[114] accordingly he
loved her tenderly. While she was still very young her father could not
refrain from making allusion in one of his pleadings to the affection he
had for her.[115] This affection, certainly the deepest he ever felt,
was the great anxiety of his life. A sadder fate than that of this young
woman it is impossible to imagine. Married at thirteen to Piso, then to
Crassipes, and separated from them by death and divorce, she re-married
for the third time while her father was absent governing Cilicia.
Suitors were numerous, even among young men of illustrious family, and
it was not only the renown of the father-in-law that attracted them, as
we might think. He tells us that they supposed he would return from his
government very rich. By marrying his daughter these young men thought
to make an advantageous match which would allow them to pay their
debts.[116] Among them were the son of the consul Sulpicius and Tiberius
Nero, who was the father of Tiberius and Drusus. Cicero favoured the
latter, who even went to Cilicia to seek his consent, but his wife and
daughter, to whom on leaving he had given the right of choosing, decided
without him for Cornelius Dolabella. He was a young man of high family,
a friend of Curio, of Caelius and Antony, who till then had lived like
them, that is to say in risking his reputation and wasting his fortune;
he was, besides, a man of wit and fashion. This husband was not much to
the taste of Atticus; but it seems that Terentia was gained over by his
great name, and perhaps Tullia was not insensible to his fine manners.
At first the marriage seemed a happy one. Dolabella charmed his
mother-in-law and his wife by his good-nature and kindness. Cicero
himself, who had been at first surprised at the haste with which the
affair had been carried through, thought that his son-in-law had a good
deal of wit and refinement. “For the rest, he added, we must be
resigned.”[117] He referred to the frivolous and dissipated habits that
Dolabella did not give up notwithstanding his marriage. He had promised
to reform, but kept his promise badly, and, however willingly Cicero
would have shut his eyes to his dissoluteness, ended by making
resignation very difficult. He continued to live like the youth of that
time, making an uproar in the streets at night under the windows of
fashionable women, and his debaucheries seemed scandalous in a city
accustomed to debauch. He attached himself to a fashionable woman,
celebrated by her amorous adventures, Caecilia Metella, wife of the
consular Lentulus Sphinther. She was the same woman who afterwards
ruined the son of the great tragic actor Aesopus, that madman who, not
knowing what to invent to ruin himself most quickly, had the strange
caprice, at a dinner that he gave to his mistress, to dissolve and
swallow a pearl worth a million sesterces[118] (£8000). With a woman
like Metella, Dolabella soon squandered his fortune, he then dissipated
his wife’s, and not content with betraying and ruining her, threatened
to divorce her when she dared to complain. It seems that Tullia loved
him very much, and for a long time resisted those who advised a divorce.
Cicero blames, somewhere, what he calls his daughter’s[119] folly, but
she had at last to decide for this after fresh outrages, and leave her
husband’s house to return to her father’s. She was enceinte. The
confinement that followed in these painful circumstances carried her off
at Tusculum at the age of thirty-one.
Cicero was inconsolable for her death, and his grief at losing her was
certainly the greatest of his life. As his affection for his daughter
was well known, letters came to him from all sides, of the sort that
usually console those only who have no need of consolation. The
philosophers, to whom his name gave credit, tried by their exhortations
to make him support his loss more courageously. Caesar wrote to him from
Spain, where he had just vanquished Pompey’s sons. The greatest
personages of all parties, Brutus, Lucceius, Dolabella himself, shared
his sorrow; but none of these letters must have touched him more
sensibly than that which he received from one of his old friends,
Sulpicius, the great lawyer, who at that time governed Greece.
Fortunately it has been preserved. It is worthy of the great man who
wrote it and of him to whom it was addressed. The following passage has
often been quoted: “I must tell you a reflection that has consoled me,
perhaps it will succeed in diminishing your affliction. On my return
from Asia, as I was sailing from Aegina towards Megara, I began to look
at the country surrounding me. Megara was in front of me, Aegina behind,
the Piraeus on the right, Corinth on the left. Formerly these were very
flourishing cities, now they are but scattered ruins. At this sight I
said to myself: How dare we, poor mortals that we are, complain of the
death of our friends, whose life nature has made so short, when we see
at one glance the mere corpses of so many great cities lying
around!”[120] The thought is new and grand. This lesson drawn from the
ruins, this manner of drawing moral ideas from nature, this grave
melancholy mingled with the contemplation of a fine landscape, are
sentiments little known to pagan antiquity. This passage seems inspired
by the spirit of Christianity. We should say it was written by a man
familiar with the sacred writings, and “who was already sitting, with
the prophet, on the ruins of desolate cities.” This is so true that
Saint Ambrose, wishing to write a letter of condolence, imitated this
one, and it was thought, quite naturally, to be Christian. Cicero’s
reply was not less noble. We see in it a most touching picture of his
sadness and isolation. After having described the sorrow he felt at the
fall of the republic, he adds: “My daughter at least was left me. I had
a place to which to retire and rest. The charm of her conversation made
me forget my cares and sorrows; but the dreadful wound I received in
losing her has re-opened in my heart all those wounds that I thought
closed. Formerly I retired into my family to forget the misfortunes of
the state, but can the state now offer me any remedy to make me forget
the misfortunes of my family? I am obliged to shun, at the same time,
both my home and the Forum, for my home no longer consoles me for the
trouble the republic causes me, and the republic cannot fill the void
that I find in my home.”[121]
Tullia’s sad fate, and the grief that her death caused her father,
attract us towards her. When we see her lamented so much we wish to know
her better. Unfortunately, not a single letter of hers remains in
Cicero’s correspondence; when he lavishes compliments on her mind, we
are obliged to take it upon trust, and a father’s compliments are always
open to suspicion. From what we know, we can easily admit that she was
an accomplished woman; _lectissima femina_, is the praise Antony, who
did not like her family, gives her.[122] We should like to know,
however, how she bore the education that her father gave her. We rather
mistrust this sort of education, and we cannot help fearing that Tullia
suffered somewhat from it. The very manner in which her father bewailed
her is, to our way of thinking, prejudicial to her memory. In composing
on her death, that treatise “On Consolation” which was filled with her
praises, he has not, perhaps, done her a great service. A young woman so
unfortunate deserved an elegy; a philosophic treatise seems to weigh on
her memory. Is it not possible that her father rather spoilt her in
wishing to make her too learned? It was quite the custom at that time.
Hortensius had made his daughter an orator, and it is asserted that, one
day, she pleaded an important case better than a good advocate. I
suspect that Cicero wished to make his a philosopher, and I am afraid he
succeeded only too well. Philosophy presents many dangers for a woman,
and Madame de Sévigné had not much reason to congratulate herself on
having put her daughter under the system of Descartes. That dry and
pedantic figure is not calculated to make us like women philosophers.
Philosophy succeeded still less with Cicero’s son Marcus than with his
daughter. His father was completely mistaken about his tastes and
abilities, which is not very extraordinary, for parental tenderness is
often more warm than enlightened. Marcus had only the instincts of a
soldier, Cicero wished to make him a philosopher and an orator, but he
lost his labour. These instincts, repressed for a moment, always broke
out again with added force. At eighteen, Marcus lived like all the young
men of that time, and it was necessary to remonstrate with him on his
expenditure. He was bored with the lessons of his master, Dionysius, and
with the rhetoric that his father tried to teach him. He wished to set
out for the Spanish war with Caesar. Instead of listening to him, Cicero
sent him to Athens to finish his education. He had an establishment like
a nobleman’s son. They gave him freedmen and slaves that he might make
as good a figure as the young Bibulus, Acidinus and Messala who studied
with him. About a hundred thousand sesterces (£800) were assigned to him
for his annual expenses, which seems a reasonable allowance for a
student in philosophy; but Marcus went away in a bad humour, and his
stay at Athens did not have the results that Cicero expected. No longer
under his father’s eyes he indulged his tastes without restraint.
Instead of following the lectures of the rhetoricians and philosophers,
his time was taken up with good dinners and noisy entertainments. His
life was so much the more dissolute as, to all appearance, he was
encouraged in his dissipation by his master himself, the rhetorician
Gorgias. This rhetorician was a thorough Greek, that is to say, a man
ready to do anything to make his fortune. In studying his pupil he saw
that he should gain more by flattering his vices than by cultivating his
good qualities, and he accordingly flattered his vices. In this school,
Marcus, instead of paying attention to Plato and Aristotle, as his
father recommended him, acquired the taste for Falernian and Chian wine,
a taste that continued with him. The only reputation that he was proud
of afterwards was that of being the hardest drinker of his time; he
sought and obtained the glory of conquering the triumvir Antony, who
enjoyed a great reputation in this line, that he was very proud of. This
was his way of avenging his father, whom Antony had put to death. Later,
Augustus, who wished to pay the son the debt he had contracted with his
father, made him a consul, but did not succeed in breaking him of his
habits of debauchery, for the sole exploit that we are told of him is,
that one day, when he was drunk, he threw his glass at Agrippa’s
head.[123]
We can understand what sorrow Cicero must have felt when he learnt of
his son’s early dissoluteness. I suppose he hesitated to believe it for
a long time, for he liked to delude himself about his children. So when
Marcus, lectured by all the family, dismissed Gorgias and promised to
behave better, his father, who was very willing to be deceived, was
eager to believe it. From this time we see him constantly engaged in
begging Atticus not to let his son want for anything, and in studying
the letters he receives from him to try and discover some progress.
There remains just one of these letters of Marcus of the time when he
seems to return to better habits. It was addressed to Tiro, and is full
of protestations of repentance. He acknowledges himself so humiliated,
so tormented by all his faults, “that not only his soul detests them,
but he cannot bear to hear of them.” To convince him thoroughly of his
sincerity he draws the picture of his life; it is impossible to imagine
one better occupied. He passes his days and almost his nights with the
philosopher Cratippus, who treats him like a son. He keeps him to dinner
in order to deprive himself of his society as little as possible. He is
so charmed with the learned conversation of Bruttius that he wishes to
have him near him, and pays his board and lodging. He declaims in Latin,
he declaims in Greek with the most learned rhetoricians. He only visits
well-informed men; he only sees learned old men, the wise Epicrates, the
venerable Leonidas, all the Areopagus in fact, and this edifying
narration ends with these words: “Above all, take care to keep in good
health, that we may be able to talk science and philosophy
together.”[124]
It is a very pleasing letter, but in reading it a certain suspicion
comes into our mind. These protestations are so exaggerated that we
suspect Marcus had some design in making them, especially when we
remember that Tiro possessed the confidence of his master, and disposed
of all his liberalities. Who knows if these regrets and high-sounding
promises did not precede and excuse some appeal for funds?
It must be said in favour of Marcus that, after having grieved his
father by his dissipation, at least he consoled his last moments. When
Brutus passed through Athens, calling to arms the young Romans who were
there, Marcus felt his soldierly instincts revive. He remembered that at
seventeen he had successfully commanded a cavalry corps at Pharsalia,
and he was one of the first to respond to the call of Brutus. He was one
of his most skilful, most devoted and most courageous lieutenants, and
often deserved his praise. “I am so pleased,” wrote Brutus to Cicero,
“with the valour, activity and energy of Marcus, that he seems always to
recall to me the father whose son he has the honour to be.”[125] We can
well understand how pleased Cicero must have been with this testimony.
It was while rejoicing over this awakening of his son that he wrote and
dedicated to him his treatise _De Officiis_, which is perhaps his finest
work, and which was his last farewell to his family and his country.
IV.
This study of Cicero’s family life is not yet complete; there remain a
few details to add. We know that a Roman family was not only composed of
the persons united by relationship, but that it also comprised the
slaves. Servant and master were then more closely connected than they
are now, and they had more community of life. In order to know Cicero
thoroughly, then, in his family, we must say a few words about his
relations with his slaves.