to ward off all danger. While he was rebuilding his house on the
Palatine, which had been destroyed after his departure, the bands of
Clodius threw themselves on the workmen and dispersed them, and,
emboldened by this success, set fire to the house of his brother
Quintus, which was close by. A few days later, as he was walking on the
Via Sacra, he heard all at once a great noise, and on turning round saw
sticks raised and naked swords. It was the same men who came to attack
him. He had great difficulty in escaping into the vestibule of a
friendly house while his slaves fought bravely before the door to give
him time to escape. Cato would not have been moved by this violence;
Cicero must have been very much frightened; above all it taught him that
his system of prudent reserve did not sufficiently assure his safety. It
was, in fact, probable that no party would expose itself to defend him
as long as he had only compliments to give it, and as he could not stand
alone and without support in the midst of all these armed factions, it
was really necessary that, in order to find the support he needed, he
should consent to attach himself more closely to one of them.
But which should he choose? This was a grave question in which his
interests were at variance with his sympathies. All his inclinations
were evidently for the aristocracy. He had closely attached himself to
it about the time of his consulship, and since that time he had
professed to serve it, and it was for it that he had just braved the
anger of the people and exposed himself to exile. But this very exile
had taught him how the most honourable course was also the least safe.
At the last moment, the senate had not found better means of saving him
than to make useless decrees, to put on mourning, and go and throw
themselves at the feet of the consuls. Cicero thought that this was not
enough. Seeing himself so ill-defended, he had suspected that people who
did not take his interests in hand more resolutely were not very sorry
for his misfortunes; and perhaps he was not wrong. The Roman
aristocracy, whatever he had done for it, could not forget he was a
“new” man. The Claudii, the Cornelii, the Manlii, always looked with a
certain displeasure on this insignificant townsman of Arpinum, whom the
popular vote had made their equal. Still they might have pardoned his
good fortune if he had borne it with more modesty; but we know his
vanity; though it was only ridiculous, the aristocracy, whom it
offended, thought it criminal. They could not tolerate the legitimate
pride with which he constantly recalled that he was only a _parvenu_.
They thought it strange that, when attacked by insolence, he dared to
reply by raillery; and quite recently they had shown themselves
scandalized that he had forgotten himself so far as to buy the villa of
Catulus at Tusculum, and to go and live on the Palatine in the house of
Crassus. Cicero, with his usual shrewdness, very clearly discerned all
these sentiments of the aristocracy, and even exaggerated them. Since
his return from exile he had yet other grievances against them. They had
taken much trouble to get him recalled; but had not foreseen the
splendour of his return, and it did not seem that they were very well
pleased with it. “Those who have clipped my wings,” said Cicero, “are
sorry to see them grow again.”[243] From this moment his good friends in
the senate would do nothing more for him. He had found his finances much
embarrassed, his house on the Palatine burnt, his villas at Tusculum and
Formiae plundered and destroyed, and they decided with reluctance to
indemnify him for these losses. What irritated him still more, was that
he saw clearly that they did not share in his anger against Clodius.
They showed themselves cool or remained silent during his violent fits
of anger. A few even, the most adroit, affected to speak only with
esteem of this factious tribune, and did not blush to give him their
hand in public. Whence came their regard for a man who had so little for
them? It was that they hoped to make use of him, and that they secretly
nourished the thought of calling in the mob to the help of the
endangered aristocracy. This alliance, although less usual than that of
the mob with despotism, was not impossible, and the bands of Clodius, if
they could be enlisted, would have permitted the senate to hold the
triumvirs in check. Cicero, who perceived this policy, feared to become
its victim; he bitterly regretted then the services he had tried to
render to the senate, and which had cost him so dear. In recalling the
dangers to which he had exposed himself in order to defend it, the
obstinate and unsuccessful struggles that he had maintained for four
years, the ruin of his political position and the disasters of his
private fortune, he said with sorrow: “I see clearly now that I have
been only a fool (_scio me asinum germanum fuisse_”).[244]
It only remained for him then to turn to the triumvirs. This was the
advice given to him by his friend the prudent Atticus, and his brother
Quintus, whom the burning of his house had rendered cautious contrary to
his habit; this was the resolution he was himself tempted to take every
time he ran some fresh danger. Nevertheless, he had some trouble in
making up his mind. The triumvirs had been heretofore his most cruel
enemies. Without speaking of Crassus, in whom he detected an accomplice
of Catiline, he well knew that it was Caesar who had let Clodius loose
against him, and he could not forget that Pompey, who had sworn to
defend him, had lately abandoned him to the vengeance of his two
friends; but he had no choice of alliances, and since he dared no longer
trust the aristocratic party, he was forced to put himself under the
protection of others. He had then to resign himself to his fate. He
authorized his brother to pledge him to Caesar and Pompey, and prepared
himself to serve their ambition. His first act, after his return, had
been to demand for Pompey one of those extraordinary powers of which he
was so greedy: by his exertions Pompey had been entrusted for six years
with the victualling of Rome, and on this occasion he had been invested
with an almost unlimited authority. A short time after, although the
public treasury was exhausted, he had a sum of money granted to Caesar
for the payment of his legions, and permission to have ten lieutenants
under his orders. When the aristocracy, who understood with what design
Caesar was carrying out the conquest of Gaul, wished to prevent him
continuing it, it was again Cicero who demanded and obtained for him
permission to finish his work. It was thus that the old enemy of the
triumvirs became their usual defender before the senate. The support
that he consented to give was not useless to them. His great name and
his eloquence drew towards him the moderate men of all parties, those
whose opinion was wavering and their convictions undecided; those, above
all, who, wearied with a too tempestuous liberty, sought everywhere a
firm hand that might give them repose; and these, joined to the personal
friends of Caesar and Pompey, to the tools that the rich Crassus had
made by bribery, and to the ambitious men of all sorts who foresaw the
advent of the monarchy and wished to be the first to salute it, formed
in the senate a majority of which Cicero was the head and the orator,
and which rendered to the triumvirs the important service of giving a
legal sanction to that power which they had gained by violence and
exercised illegally.
Cicero had at length obtained repose. His enemies feared him, Clodius
dared no longer risk attacking him, his familiarity with the new masters
was envied, and yet this skilful conduct, which gained for him the
thanks of the triumvirs and the congratulations of Atticus, did not fail
at times to disturb him. It was in vain for him to say to himself that
“his life had regained its splendour,” he did not feel less remorse in
serving men whose ambition he knew, and whom he knew to be dangerous to
the liberty of his country. In the midst of the efforts that he made to
satisfy them, he had sudden awakenings of patriotism which made him
blush. His private correspondence bears everywhere the trace of the
alternations of mood through which he passed. One day he wrote to
Atticus in a light and resolute tone: “Let us give up honour, justice,
and fine sentiments.... Since those who can do nothing will not love me,
let us try to make ourselves loved by those who can do everything.”[245]
But shame seized him the next day, and he could not avoid saying to his
friend: “Is anything sadder than our life, mine above all? If I speak
according to my convictions I pass for a madman; if I listen to my
interests, I am accused of being a slave; if I am silent, they say I am
afraid.”[246] Even in his public speeches, notwithstanding the restraint
he puts on himself, we can feel his secret dissatisfaction. It seems to
me that we discover it above all in that extraordinary tone of
bitterness and violence which was then habitual to him. Never, perhaps,
did he pronounce more passionate invectives. Now this excess of violence
towards others often comes from a mind ill at ease. What made his
eloquence so bitter at this time was that uneasy feeling which a man has
who is in the wrong path and has not the courage to leave it. He did not
forgive his old friends their raillery and his new ones their demands;
he reproached himself secretly for his base concessions; he had a spite
against others and against himself, and Vatinius or Piso suffered for
all the rest. In this condition of mind he could not be a safe friend
for anybody. It happened sometimes that he suddenly turned on his new
friends, and gave blows so much the more disagreeable that they were not
expected. Sometimes he diverted himself by attacking their best friends,
to show others and prove to himself that he had not entirely lost his
liberty. People had been very much surprised to hear him, in a speech in
which he defended Caesar’s interests, praise to excess Bibulus, whom
Caesar detested. One day even he seemed quite ready to return to those
whom he had called honest men before he abandoned them. It seemed to him
a good opportunity to break with his new party in a formal manner. The
friendship of the triumvirs had become very cool. Pompey was not pleased
with the success of that Gallic war which threatened to make his own
victories forgotten. Cicero, who heard him speak without restraint
against his rival, thought he might without danger give some
satisfaction to his irritated conscience, and wished by a brilliant
stroke to deserve the pardon of his old friends. Taking advantage of
some difficulty that was raised in regard to the carrying out of
Caesar’s agrarian law, he formally announced that on the Ides of May he
would speak on the sale of the Campanian lands which by this law were
distributed among the people. The effect of his declaration was very
great. The allies of the triumvirs were as much offended as they were
surprised, and the aristocratic party hastened to welcome with
transports of joy the return of the eloquent deserter, but in a few days
everything turned against him. At the very moment when he decided on
this brilliant stroke, the alliance between the triumvirs that was
thought to be broken, was renewed at Lucca, and, amid a concourse of
their flatterers, they once more divided the world between them. Cicero,
then, was about to find himself again alone and without support in the
presence of an angry and all-powerful enemy who threatened to deliver
him up again to the vengeance of Clodius. Atticus scolded; Quintus, who
had pledged himself for his brother, complained roughly that his
promises were being broken. Pompey, although he had secretly encouraged
the defection, affected to be more angry than anybody. The unhappy
Cicero, attacked on all sides, and trembling at the passions which he
had raised, hastened to submit, and promised everything that was
required. Thus this attempt at independence only made his slavery
heavier.
From this moment he seems to have resolutely accepted his new position,
from a feeling that he could not change it. He resigned himself to heap
more and more exaggerated praises on the vain Pompey, who never had
enough. He consented to become the agent of Caesar with Oppius and
Balbus, and to supervise the public buildings he was constructing. He
went further, and was willing at the request of his powerful protectors
to give his hand to men whom he regarded as his greatest enemies. This
was not a small sacrifice for a man who had such strong aversions; but
from the time that he joined their party so decidedly, he was obliged to
accept their friendship as he defended their plans. They began to take
steps to reconcile him to Crassus. This was a great matter which was not
done in a day, for when it was thought that their old enmity was
appeased, it broke out all at once in a discussion in the senate, and
Cicero abused his new ally with a violence that surprised himself. “I
thought my hatred exhausted,” said he naïvely, “and did not imagine any
remained in my heart.”[247] He was then asked to undertake the defence
of Vatinius; he consented with a pretty good grace, although he had
pronounced a furious invective against him the year before. The
advocates in Rome were accustomed to these sudden changes, and Cicero
had done the same thing more than once. When Gabinius returned from
Egypt, after having restored King Ptolemy against the formal command of
the senate, Cicero, who could not abide him, thinking it a good
opportunity to ruin him, prepared to attack him; but Pompey came to beg
him urgently to defend him. He dared not refuse, changed his part, and
submitted to speak in favour of a man whom he detested and a cause which
he considered bad. He had at least the consolation of losing his case,
and although he was always anxious for success, it is probable that this
failure did not give him much pain.
But he well understood that so much deference and submission, all these
notorious self-contradictions to which he was forced, would end by
rousing public opinion against him. Therefore, about this time, he
decided to write an important letter to his friend Lentulus, one of the
chiefs of the aristocracy, which he probably intended to be circulated,
and in which he explains his conduct.[248] In this letter, after having
related the facts in his own way and sufficiently abused those whom he
had abandoned, a convenient and common mode of anticipating their
complaints and making them responsible for the mischief he was about to
do them, he ventures to present, with singular candour, a sort of
apology for his political instability. The reasons he gives to justify
it are not always very good; but we must believe that better cannot be
found, since they have not ceased to be used. Under the pretence that
Plato has somewhere said, “one must not do violence to one’s country any
more than to one’s father,” Cicero lays it down as a principle, that a
politician ought not to persist in wishing for what his fellow-citizens
do not wish, nor lose his pains in attempting useless opposition.
Circumstances change, one must change with them, and suit oneself to the
wind that blows, so as not to go to pieces on the rocks. Besides, is
that really to change? Cannot one in the main wish for the same thing
and serve one’s country under different banners? A man is not fickle for
defending, according to circumstances, opinions that seem contradictory
if by opposite routes he marches to the same goal, and do we not know
“that we must often shift the sails when we wish to arrive in port”?
These are only the general maxims which an inventive politician can make
up to hide his weaknesses, and there is no need to discuss them. The
best way to defend Cicero is to remember in what a time he lived, and
how little fitted he was for that time. This elegant literary man, this
skilful artist, this friend of the arts of peace, had been placed, by a
caprice of fate, in one of the most stormy and troubled periods of
history. What could a man of leisure and study do among those deadly
struggles where force was master, a man who had no arms but his words,
and who always dreamed of the pleasures of peaceful times and the
pacific laurels of eloquence? A more manly soul than his would have been
needed to make head against these assaults. Events stronger than himself
confounded his designs every instant and played with his hesitating
will. On his entry into public life he had taken for his motto, leisure
and honour, _otium cum dignitate_; but these two things are not easy to
unite in revolutionary times, and almost always one of the two is lost
when we are too anxious to preserve the other. Resolute characters, who
know this well, make their choice between them at once, and, according
as one is a Cato or an Atticus, one decides from the very first day
either for leisure or for honour. The undecided, like Cicero, pass from
one to the other, according to circumstances, and thus jeopardize both.
We have arrived at one of those painful moments in his life when he
sacrifices honour to leisure; let us not be too severe upon him, and let
us remember that, later, he sacrificed not only his leisure, but even
his life, to save his honour.
II.
One of the results of the new policy of Cicero was to give him an
opportunity of becoming well acquainted with Caesar. Not that they had
been hitherto strangers to one another. The taste of both for letters
and the similar nature of their studies, had united them in their youth,
and from these early relations, which men never forget, there had
remained some natural sympathy and good-will. But as in later life they
had attached themselves to opposite parties, circumstances had separated
them. In the Forum, and in the senate, they had acquired the habit of
always being of opposite opinions, and naturally their friendship had
suffered from the vivacity of their dissensions. Yet Cicero tells us
that, even when they were most excited against each other, Caesar could
never hate him.[249]
Politics had separated them, politics reunited them. When Cicero turned
towards the party of the triumvirs their intimate relations recommenced;
but this time their position was different, and their connection could
no longer have the same character. The old school-fellow of Cicero had
become his protector. It was no longer a mutual inclination or common
studies, it was interest and necessity that united them, and their new
ties were formed by a sort of reciprocal agreement in which one of the
two gave his talents and a little of his honour, that the other might
guarantee him repose. These are not very favourable circumstances, it
must be admitted, to produce a sincere friendship. However, when we read
Cicero’s private correspondence, in which he speaks unreservedly, we
cannot doubt but that he found many charms in these relations with
Caesar which seemed to him at first to be so difficult. Probably this
was because he compared them with those which he had at the same time to
keep up with Pompey. Caesar at least was affable and polite. Although he
had the gravest affairs on his hands, he found time to think of his
friends and to joke with them. Victorious as he was, he allowed them to
write to him “familiarly and without subserviency.”[250] He answered
with amiable letters, “full of politeness, kind attentions and
charm,”[251] which delighted Cicero. Pompey, on the contrary, seemed to
take a pleasure in wounding him by his lofty airs. This pompous and vain
man, whom the adoration of the Orientals had spoilt, and who could not
avoid assuming the deportment of a conqueror merely in going from his
house at Alba to Rome, affected an imperious and haughty tone which
alienated everybody. His dissimulation was still more displeasing than
his insolence. He had a sort of dislike of communicating his projects to
others; he hid them even from his most devoted friends, who wished to
know them in order to support them. Cicero complains more than once that
he could never discover what he wanted; it even happened that he was
completely deceived as to his real intentions and made him angry,
thinking he was doing him a service. This obstinate dissimulation
passed, no doubt, for profound policy in the eyes of the multitude; but
the more skilful had no difficulty in discerning its motive. If he did
not express his opinion to anybody, it was because most frequently he
had no opinion, and, as it very commonly happens, silence with him only
served to cover the fact. He went at random, without fixed principles or
settled system, and never looked beyond present circumstances. Events
always took him by surprise, and he showed clearly that he was no more
capable of directing them than of foreseeing them. His ambition itself,
which was his dominant passion, had no precise views or decided aims.
Whatever dignities were offered to satisfy it, it was plainly seen that
he always desired something else; this was perceived without his saying
it, for he tried very awkwardly to hide it. His ordinary stratagem was
to pretend indifference, and he wished to be forced to accept what he
most ardently desired. We can well understand that this pretence when
too often repeated deceived nobody. Upon the whole, as he had
successively attacked and defended all parties, and after having often
appeared to desire an almost royal authority, had not endeavoured to
destroy the republic when he had the power to do so, it is impossible
for us to discover now what plan he had conceived, or even if he had
conceived any distinct plan at all.
It is not so with Caesar. He knew the object of his ambition, and saw
distinctly what he wished to do. His plans were settled even before he
entered public life;[252] in his youth he had formed the design to
become master. The spectacle of the revolutions on which he had looked
had given rise to the thought; the confidence that he had in his own
capacity, and in the inferiority of his enemies, gave him strength to
undertake it, and a sort of superstitious belief in his destiny, not
uncommon in men who attempt these great adventures, assured him in
advance of success. Therefore he marched resolutely towards his end,
without showing undue haste to attain it, but without ever losing sight
of it. To know exactly what one wants is not a common quality, above all
in those troubled times in which good and evil are mingled, and yet
success only comes to those who possess it. What, above all, gave Caesar
his superiority was, that in the midst of those irresolute politicians
who had only uncertain projects, hesitating convictions, and occasional
ambitions, he alone had a deliberate ambition and a settled design. One
could not approach him without coming under the influence of that
tranquil and powerful will, which had a clear idea of its projects, the
consciousness of its own strength, and the confidence of victory. Cicero
felt it like the rest, notwithstanding his prejudices. In presence of
such consistency and firmness he could not avoid making unfavourable
comparisons with the perturbation and inconsistency of his old friend.
“I am of your opinion about Pompey, he hinted to his brother, or rather
you are of mine, for I have sung the praises of Caesar for a long
time.”[253] In fact, it was sufficient to approach a man of real genius
to recognize the emptiness of this semblance of a great man, whose easy
successes and air of inflated majesty had imposed so long upon the
admiration of fools.