of Clodia; but Cicero is a too partial witness to be altogether just,
and the furious hatred he bore the brother renders him very much
suspected when he speaks of the sister. Moreover, he partly contradicts
himself when he tells us she had kept up relations with very honourable
people, which would be very surprising if it were true that she had
committed all the crimes that he lays to her charge. It is very
difficult to believe that persons of consideration in the republic, and
persons who were careful of their reputation, would have continued to
see her if they had thought that she had poisoned her husband, and was
the mistress of her brothers. Cicero, however, did not invent this; it
was public rumour that he complacently repeated. Many people in Rome
believed it, Clodia’s enemies liked to repeat it, and mischievous verses
were made about it which were written upon every wall. Clodia’s
reputation was, then, very bad, and it must be admitted that,
notwithstanding some exaggerations, she partly deserved it. There is
nothing to show that she killed her husband, as she was accused of
doing; these accusations of poisoning were then widespread, and were
accepted with incredible levity, but she had made him very unhappy
during his life, and did not appear very much grieved at his death. It
is doubtful, also, whatever Cicero may assert, that her brothers were
her lovers, but it is unfortunately too certain that she had a good many
others. The sole excuse that can be pleaded for her is that this way of
living was then very general. Scandals of this kind had never been more
common among the great ladies of Rome. Roman society was passing through
a crisis whose causes, which go back a long way, deserve to be
considered. We must say a few words about them, in order to account for
the grave injury that public morals had received.
In a country where the family was respected as it was at Rome, women
could not fail to have much importance. It was impossible that their
influence, which was already so great within the house, should not
attempt to show itself outside, and the honourable place they held in
private life must one day tempt them to invade public life also. The
ancient Romans, so jealous of their authority, had the consciousness of
this danger, and neglected nothing in order to defend themselves against
it. We know how they affected to treat women; there was no sort of
unkind remarks they did not make about them; they got them attacked on
the stage and mocked them even in their political speeches:[180] but we
must not mistake the sense of these railleries and pity the objects of
them too much. They are only attacked thus because they are feared, and
all these pleasantries are not so much insults as precautions. These
rough soldiers, these rude peasants, have learnt, in living with them,
how subtle and enterprising their minds are, and in how many ways they
are more capable than themselves; consequently they take a good deal of
trouble to confine them to their households, and even that does not
suffice to reassure them; in the household itself they must be
subjugated and bridled. They affect to think and to say that they are
weak and untamed beings (_indomita animalia_), incapable of governing
themselves alone, and they hasten to provide for their management. They
are kept, under this pretext, in a continual state of tutelage; they are
always “under the hand” of their father, brother, or husband; they
cannot sell, buy, trade, or do anything without a council to assist
them: in acting thus the men pretend they are protecting them, in
reality it is themselves they are protecting against them. Cato, their
great enemy, ingenuously admits it in a moment of frankness. “Remember,”
Livy makes him say _à propos_ of the _lex Oppia_, “all those regulations
our ancestors made to subject wives to their husbands. Shackled as they
are, you have trouble to manage them. What will happen if you give them
their liberty, if you allow them to enjoy the same rights as yourselves?
Do you think you will then be their masters? The day they become your
equals they will be your superiors.”[181] This day arrived just about
the time of which we are treating. In the midst of the weakening of
ancient usages, the laws against women were not more respected than
others. Cicero says that the gallant lawyers furnished them with
ingenious means to free themselves from these laws without appearing to
violate them.[182] At the same time, men were accustomed to see them
take a more important place in society, and to recognize their influence
in the government of the republic. Almost all the politicians of that
time are governed by their wives or by their mistresses, thus the
innumerable gallantries of Caesar must have passed in the eyes of many
people, as later those of Augustus did, for profound policy, as it might
be supposed that he only sought to please the women in order to lead
their husbands.
Thus, by the abolition of the old laws, and by the alteration of ancient
maxims, women had become free. Now, it is to be remarked that, in
general, the first use made of regained liberty is to abuse it. We
cannot enjoy quietly the rights of which we have been long deprived, and
the first moments of liberty bring a sort of intoxication that it is
difficult to check. This is what happened to the Roman society of that
time, and all these irregularities that we notice in the conduct of
women then are partly explained by the allurements and intoxication of
their new liberty. Those who love money, like Terentia, Cicero’s wife,
hasten to take advantage of the right of disposing of their fortune,
that has been restored to them, they associate themselves with freedmen
and agents for doubtful gains, rob their husbands without scruple, and
throw themselves into speculations and trade, to which they bring,
together with an almost incredible rapacity, that taste for small
savings and economies which is natural to them. Those who prefer
pleasure to wealth give themselves up to all pleasures with a passionate
eagerness. The less bold take advantage of the facilities of divorce to
pass from one amour to another under cover of the law. Others do not
even take this trouble, and impudently flaunt their scandalous
behaviour.
Clodia was one of the latter; but among all her vices, which she took no
care to hide, we are forced to recognize in her some good qualities. She
was not grasping; her purse was open to her friends, and Caelius was not
ashamed to dip into it. She liked clever men, and attracted them to her
house. At one time she wished to persuade Cicero, whose talents she much
admired, to give up his foolish Terentia for her and to marry her; but
Terentia, who suspected it, succeeded in mortally embroiling them. An
old scholiast says that she danced better than it was proper for an
honest woman to do.[183] This was not the only art for which she had a
taste, and it has been thought possible to infer from a passage of
Cicero that she also wrote verses.[184] To cultivate letters, to seek
out clever men, to like refined and elegant pleasures, does not seem at
first sight to be blameworthy; on the contrary, these are among us the
qualities that a woman of society is obliged to possess or to feign.
They thought otherwise at Rome, and, as the courtesans alone had then
the privilege of following this free and accomplished life, every woman
who sought this ran the risk of being confounded with them, and of being
treated with the same rigour by public opinion; but Clodia did not care
for public opinion. She brought into her private conduct, into her
affections, the same passionateness and the same ardour that her brother
did into public life. Ready for all excesses, and not blushing to avow
them, loving and hating furiously, incapable of self-control, and hating
all restraint, she did not belie that great and haughty family from
which she was descended, and even in her vices her blood was recognized.
In a country where so much respect was shown for ancient customs, in
that classic land of _decorum_ (the thing and the word are Roman),
Clodia took pleasure in shocking the established customs; she went out
publicly with her male friends; she was accompanied by them in the
public gardens or on the Appian road, constructed by her great ancestor.
She boldly accosted people whom she knew; instead of timidly lowering
her eyes as a well-brought-up matron should have done, she dared to
speak to them (Cicero says that she even kissed them sometimes), and
invited them to her repasts. Grave, staid, and rigid people were
indignant; but the young, whom this freedom did not displease, were
charmed, and went to dine with Clodia.[185]
Caelius was at that time one of the fashionable young men of Rome.
Already he had a great reputation as an orator. He was dreaded for the
satirical sharpness of his speech. He was bold to temerity, always ready
to throw himself into the most perilous enterprises. He spent his money
freely, and drew after him a train of friends and clients. Few men
danced as well as he,[186] no one surpassed him in the art of dressing
with taste, and the beauty and breadth of the purple band that bordered
his toga were spoken of on all hands in Rome. All these qualities, the
serious as well as the trivial, were of a nature to attract Clodia.
Neighbourhood made their acquaintance more easy, and she soon became the
mistress of Caelius.
Cicero, notwithstanding his reserve, permits us to guess the life they
then led. He speaks in hints of those brilliant _fêtes_ that Clodia gave
to her lover and to the youth of Rome in her gardens on the banks of the
Tiber; but it seems that Baiae was the chief theatre of these amours.
Baiae had been for some time already the regular rendezvous of the
fashionable people of Rome and Italy. The hot-springs that are found
there in abundance served as the occasion or pretext for these
gatherings. Some invalids went there for their health, and their
presence provided an excuse for a crowd of healthy people who went there
to amuse themselves. People flocked there from the month of April, and
during the fine season a thousand light intrigues were carried on, the
report of which reached Rome. Grave folks took great care not to be seen
in this whirl of pleasure, and later Clodius accused Cicero, as if it
were a crime, simply of having passed through it; but Caelius and Clodia
were not anxious to hide themselves; consequently they gave themselves
up without restraint to all the pleasures that were to be found in that
country that Horace calls the most beautiful in the world. All Rome
talked of their races on the shore, the brilliancy of their feasts and
water-parties in boats carrying singers and musicians. This is all that
Cicero tells us, or rather only gives us a glimpse of, for, contrary to
his habit, and to our great loss, he has for once in a way been
discreet, in order not to compromise his friend Caelius. Fortunately we
can learn more about this society and satisfy our curiosity; to do so we
have only to turn ourselves to him who was, with Lucretius, the greatest
poet of that time, Catullus. Catullus lived among these persons who were
so well worthy of study, and had relations with them which permitted him
to depict them well. Everybody knows that Lesbia whom his verses have
immortalized; but it is not so well known that Lesbia was not one of
those fictitious persons that the elegiac poets often create. Ovid tells
us that this name covered that of a Roman lady, probably a great lady,
since he will not name her, and by his way of speaking we see clearly
that everybody then knew her.[187] Apuleius, who lived much later, is
less reticent, and he tells us that Lesbia was Clodia.[188] Catullus,
then, was the lover of Clodia, and the rival of Caelius: he also
frequented that house on the Palatine, and those fine gardens on the
Tiber, and his verses complete our knowledge of that society of which he
was one of the heroes.
I said just now that Clodia did not love money with the avidity of the
women of gallantry of that time and of all times. The history of
Catullus proves this well. This young provincial of Verona, although he
belonged to an honourable family, was not very rich, and after he had
lived a life of dissipation and pleasure for some time at Rome, he had
nothing left. His poor little estate was soon deeply mortgaged. “It is
not exposed, he says gaily, either to the impetuous north wind, or to
the fury of the _auster_: it is a hurricane of debts that blows on it
from all sides. Oh! the horrible and pestilent wind!”[189] By the
picture that he draws of some of his friends, still poorer and more
indebted than himself, we see clearly that he could not reckon upon
them, and that his purse which was “full of spiders” had no great help
to expect from them. It was not, then, fortune or birth that Clodia
loved in Catullus, but wit and talent. What attracted him in her, what
he so passionately loved, was distinction and grace. These are not
usually the qualities of women who live like Clodia; but, however low
she might have descended, she was still a great lady. Catullus says so
in an epigram in which he compares Lesbia to a celebrated beauty of that
time—“Quintia is considered beautiful by many men. I think her tall,
fair, erect: these are her attractions; I recognize them all. But that
their union forms beauty, that I deny. There is nothing graceful in her,
and in all that vast body there is not a spark of wit or charm. It is
Lesbia who is beautiful, more beautiful than all, and she has so much
grace that there is none left for the rest.”[190]
A woman like Clodia, who had such a decided taste for clever people,
must have been pleased to frequent the society in which Catullus lived.
We see plainly, by what he relates to us of it, that there was none more
witty and agreeable in Rome. It united writers and politicians, poets
and noblemen, differing in position and fortune, but all friends of
letters and pleasure. There were Cornificius, Quintilius Varus, Helvius
Cinna, whose verses had then much reputation, Asinius Pollio, who was as
yet only a youth of great promise; there was above all Licinius Calvus,
at once statesman and poet, one of the most striking figures of that
time, who, at twenty-one, had attacked Vatinius with so much vigour,
that Vatinius, terrified, had turned towards his judges, saying: “If my
opponent is a great orator, it does not follow that I am guilty!” In the
same group we must place Caelius, who, by his wit and tastes, was worthy
to belong to it, and over it Cicero the protector of all this brilliant
youth, which was proud of his genius and renown, and which saluted in
him, according to the expression of Catullus, the most eloquent of the
sons of Romulus.
In these assemblies of clever men, of whom many were political
personages, politics were not excluded; they were very republican, and
from them issued the most violent epigrams against Caesar. We know the
tone in which those of Catullus are written; Calvus had composed others
which are lost, and which were, it is said, still more cutting.
Literature, however, we can well understand, held in them at least as
high a place as politics. They did not fail to laugh at bad writers from
time to time, and in order to make an example, ceremoniously burnt the
poems of Volusius. Sometimes, at the end of the repast, when wine and
laughter had heated their brains, they sent each other poetic
challenges; the tablets passed from hand to hand, and each wrote the
most incisive verses he could make. But it was pleasure more than
anything else that occupied them. All these poets and politicians were
young and amorous, and whatever pleasure they may have found in rallying
Volusius, or tearing Caesar to pieces, they preferred to sing their
loves. It is this which has made them famous. The lyrical poetry of the
Latins has nothing to compare with those short and charming pieces that
Catullus wrote for Lesbia. Propertius mingles too much mythology with
his sighs; Ovid is only an inspired debauchee, Catullus alone has tones
that touch the heart, because he alone was mastered by a deep and
sincere love. Till then he had led a gay and dissipated life, and his
heart was wearied with passing connections; but the day that he met
Lesbia he learnt the meaning of passion. Whatever we may think of
Clodia, the love of Catullus elevates her, and we never see her in a
more favourable light than in this exquisite poetry. The verses of
Catullus seem to make real and living those _fêtes_ that she gave to the
youth of Rome, and of which we regretted just now the absence of
sufficient details; for was it not for these charming parties, for these
free and sumptuous repasts, that he composed his finest works? It was
there, no doubt, under the groves on the banks of the Tiber, that he
sang that fine imitation of Sappho’s most fervid ode that he made for
Lesbia. It was, perhaps, on the shore of Baiae, fronting Naples and
Capreae, under that voluptuous sky, in the midst of the attractions of
that enchanted land, that for the first time were read those verses in
which so much grace is mingled with so much passion, and which are so
worthy of the exquisite landscape in the midst of which I take pleasure
in placing them:
“Let us live, let us love, my Lesbia, and laugh together at all the
reproaches of stern old age. The sun dies to be born again; but we, when
our short-lived light is once extinguished, must sleep an eternal night
without awakening. Give me a thousand kisses, a hundred, a thousand, a
hundred once more, then a thousand and a hundred again. Afterwards, when
we have embraced thousands of times, we will confuse the reckoning to
know it no longer, and leave the jealous no pretext to envy us by
letting them know how many kisses we have given each other.”[191]
That is a remarkable moment in Roman society, when we meet with these
polished assemblies, in which everything is talked of and all ranks are
mingled, where the writers have their place beside the politicians,
where they dare openly express their love for the arts and treat
imagination as a power. We may say, to use a quite modern expression,
that it is here that the life of society begins. There was nothing like
it among the old Romans. They lived on the Forum or in their houses.
Between the multitude and the family they knew little of that middle
point that we call society, that is to say, those elegant and select
assemblies, numerous without confusion, where we are at once more at
liberty than among unknown persons in public places, and yet less at
home than in the family circle. Before reaching this point it was
necessary to wait until Rome was civilized and literature had won her
place, which scarcely happened until the last age of the republic. And
yet we must not exaggerate. That _society_ which then had its beginning,
seems to us at times very coarse. Catullus tells us that at those
luxurious entertainments where such fine poems were read, there were
guests who would even steal the napkins.[192] The conversations they
held were often risky, to judge by certain epigrams of the great poet.
Clodia who assembled at her house these clever men, had singular
eccentricities of conduct. The elegant pleasures sought by a woman of
society were far from satisfying her, and she fell at last into excesses
that made her former friends blush. They themselves, those heroes of
fashion, whose good taste was vaunted on all sides, who talked with so
much charm and made such tender verses, did not behave much better than
she, and were not much more delicate. They had much to reproach
themselves with while their connection with Clodia lasted; when it
ended, they committed the unpardonable fault of not respecting the past,
and of failing in that consideration that is always due to a woman whom
one has once loved. Catullus stung with coarse epigrams her who had
inspired his finest verses. Caelius, alluding to the price paid to the
vilest courtesans, called her, in open court, the quarter of an as
(_quadrantaria_) woman, and this cruel epithet stuck to her. We see that
this society had still much progress to make; but it will do it quickly,
thanks to the monarchy which was about to commence. Everything changed
with Augustus. Under the new government, these remains of coarseness
which savoured of the old republic, disappeared; men made such progress,
and became so fastidious, that the refined were not slow in laughing at
Calvus and Catullus, and that Plautus passed for a barbarian. They
polish and refine themselves, and at the same time become insipid. A
courtly tone is spread over gallant literature, and the change is so
sudden, that little more than a quarter of a century was needed for the
descent from Catullus to Ovid. The amours of Clodia and Catullus ended
very sadly. Clodia did not pride herself on being faithful, and
justified her lover only too well when he wrote to her: “A woman’s
promises must be confided to the wind, or written on running
water.”[193] Catullus, who knew he was deceived, was angry with himself
for submitting to it. He reasoned with himself, he chid himself, but he
did not cure himself. Notwithstanding all the trouble he took to gain
courage, love was the stronger. After painful struggles which rent his
heart, he returned sad and submissive to the feet of her whom he could
not help despising, and whom he yet continued to love. “I love and I
hate, said he; you ask me how that can be, I cannot tell; but I feel
that it is so, and my soul is in tortures.”[194] So much suffering and
resignation touched Clodia very slightly. She plunged deeper and deeper
in obscure amours, and the poor poet, who had no more hope, was
compelled to separate from her for ever. The rupture between Clodia and
Caelius was much more tragic. It was by a criminal trial that their
amour was ended. This time Caelius wearied first. Clodia, who, as we
have seen, usually took the first step, was not used to such an end to
her amours. Enraged at being abandoned, she concerted with the enemies
of Caelius, who were not few, and had him accused of several crimes, and
particularly of having tried to poison her. This, it must be admitted,
was a very sad morrow to the charming _fêtes_ of Baiae! The trial must
have been very amusing, and we may believe that the Forum that day did
not lack curious hearers. Caelius appeared accompanied by those who had
been his protectors, his friends, and his teachers, the wealthy Crassus
and Cicero. They had divided his defence between them, and Cicero
specially undertook the part regarding Clodia. Although he declared, in
the opening of his speech, “that he was not the enemy of women, and
still less of a woman who was the friend of all men,” we may well
believe that he did not miss such a good opportunity of avenging himself
for all the ill this family had done him. That day Clodia suffered for
her whole family. Never had Cicero been so sharp and stinging; the
judges must have laughed much, and Caelius was acquitted.
Cicero had solemnly promised in his speech that his client would alter
his conduct. In fact, it was quite time for him to reform, his youth had
lasted only too long. He was then twenty-eight, and it was really time
for him to think of becoming aedile or tribune, if he wished to play
that political part that had been his father’s ambition for him. We do
not know whether, in the sequel, he rigorously carried out all the
undertakings Cicero had made in his name; perhaps he avoided henceforth
compromising himself by too open scandals, and perhaps the ill success
of his amours with Clodia had cured him of these noisy adventures; but
it is very difficult to suppose that he became austere and lived after
the manner of the old Romans. We see that, several years later when he
was aedile and taking part in the most serious business, he found time
to learn and repeat all the scandalous tales of Rome. This is what he
wrote to Cicero, then proconsul of Cilicia:—