_THE CONDITION OF ROME._
It is far from my intention to write a history of Rome during the
Ciceronian period. Were I to attempt such a work, I should have to
include the doings of Sertorius in Spain, of Lucullus and Pompey in the
East, Cæsar's ten years in Gaul, and the civil wars from the taking of
Marseilles to the final battles of Thapsus and Munda. With very many of
the great events which the period includes Cicero took but slight
concern--so slight that we can hardly fail to be astonished when we find
how little he had to say of them--he who ran through all the offices of
the State, who was the chosen guardian of certain allied cities, who has
left to us so large a mass of correspondence on public subjects, and who
was essentially a public man for thirty-four years. But he was a public
man who concerned himself personally with Rome rather than with the
Roman Empire. Home affairs, and not foreign affairs, were dear to him.
To Cæsar's great deeds in Gaul we should have had from him almost no
allusion, had not his brother Quintus been among Cæsar's officers, and
his young friend Trebatius been confided by himself to Cæsar's care. Of
Pharsalia we only learn from him that, in utter despair of heart, he
allowed himself to be carried to the war. Of the proconsular governments
throughout the Roman Empire we should not learn much from Cicero, were
it not that it has been shown to us by the trial of Verres how atrocious
might be the conduct of a Roman Governor, and by the narratives of
Cicero's own rule in Cilicia, how excellent. The history of the time has
been written for modern readers by Merivale and Mommsen, with great
research and truth as to facts, but, as I think with some strong
feeling. Now Mr. Froude has followed with his Cæsar, which might well
have been called Anti-Cicero. All these in lauding, and the two latter
in deifying, the successful soldier, have, I think, dealt hardly with
Cicero, attributing to his utterances more than they mean; doubting his
sincerity, but seeing clearly the failure of his political efforts. With
the great facts of the Roman Empire as they gradually formed themselves
from the fall of Carthage, when the Empire began,[52] to the
establishment of Augustus, when it was consummated, I do not pretend to
deal, although by far the most momentous of them were crowded into the
life of Cicero. But in order that I may, if possible, show the condition
of his mind toward the Republic--that I may explain what it was that he
hoped and why he hoped it--I must go back and relate in a few words what
it was that Marius and Sulla had done for Rome.
Of both these men all the doings with which history is greatly concerned
were comprised within the early years of Cicero's life. Marius, indeed,
was nearly fifty years of age when his fellow-townsman was born, and had
become a distinguished soldier, and, though born of humble parents, had
pushed himself to the Consulate. His quarrel with Sulla had probably
commenced, springing from jealousy as to deeds done in the Jugurthine
war. But it is not matter of much moment, now that Marius had proved
himself to be a good and hardy soldier, excepting in this, that, by
making himself a soldier in early life, he enabled himself in his latter
years to become the master of Rome.
Sulla, too, was born thirty-two years before Cicero--a patrician of the
bluest blood--and having gone, as we say, into public life, and having
been elected Quæstor, became a soldier by dint of office, as a man with
us may become head of the Admiralty. As Quæstor he was sent to join
Marius in Africa a few months before Cicero was born. Into his hands, as
it happened, not into those of Marius, Jugurtha was surrendered by his
father-in-law, Bocchus, who thought thus to curry favor with the Romans.
Thence came those internecine feuds, in which, some twenty-five years
later, all Rome was lying butchered. The cause of quarrelling between
these two men, the jealousies which grew in the heart of the elder, from
the renewed successes of the younger, are not much to us now; but the
condition to which Rome had been brought, when two such men could
scramble for the city, and each cut the throats of the relatives,
friends, and presumed allies of the other, has to be inquired into by
those who would understand what Rome had been, what it was, and what it
was necessarily to become.
When Cicero was of an age to begin to think of these things, and had put
on the "toga virilis," and girt himself with a sword to fight under the
father of Pompey for the power of Rome against the Italian allies who
were demanding citizenship, the quarrel was in truth rising to its
bitterness. Marius and Sulla were on the same side in that war. But
Marius had then not only been Consul, but had been six times Consul; and
he had beaten the Teutons and the Cimbrians, by whom Romans had feared
that all Italy would be occupied. What was not within the power of such
a leader of soldiers? and what else but a leader of soldiers could
prevail when Italy and Rome, but for such a General, had been at the
mercy of barbaric hordes, and when they had been compelled to make that
General six times Consul?
Marius seems to have been no politician. He became a soldier and then a
General; and because he was great as a soldier and General, the affairs
of the State fell into his hands with very little effort. In the old
days of Rome military power had been needed for defence, and successful
defence had of course produced aggressive masterhood and increased
territory. When Hannibal, while he was still lingering in Italy, had
been circumvented by the appearance of Scipio in Africa and the Romans
had tasted the increased magnificence of external conquest, the desire
for foreign domination became stronger than that of native rule. From
that time arms were in the ascendant rather than policy. Up to that time
a Consul had to become a General, because it was his business to look
after the welfare of the State. After that time a man became a Consul in
order that he might be a General. The toga was made to give way to the
sword, and the noise of the Forum to the trumpets. We, looking back now,
can see that it must have been so, and we are prone to fancy that a wise
man looking forward then might have read the future. In the days of
Marius there was probably no man so wise. Cæsar was the first to see it.
Cicero would have seen it, but that the idea was so odious to him that
he could not acknowledge to himself that it need be so. His life was one
struggle against the coming evil--against the time in which brute force
was to be made to dominate intellect and civilization. His "cedant arma
togæ" was a scream, an impotent scream, against all that Sulla had done
or Cæsar was about to do. The mischief had been effected years before
his time, and had gone too far ahead to be arrested even by his tongue.
Only, in considering these things, let us confess that Cicero saw what
was good and what was evil, though he was mistaken in believing that the
good was still within reach.
Marius in his way was a Cæsar--as a soldier, undoubtedly a very
efficient Cæsar--having that great gift of ruling his own appetites
which enables those who possess it to conquer the appetites of others.
It may be doubted whether his quickness in stopping and overcoming the
two great hordes from the north, the Teutons and the Cimbrians, was not
equal in strategy to anything that Cæsar accomplished in Gaul. It is
probable that Cæsar learned much of his tactics from studying the
man[oe]uvres of Marius. But Marius was only a General. Though he became
hot in Roman politics, audacious and confident, knowing how to use and
how to disregard various weapons of political power as they had been
handed down by tradition and law, the "vetoes" and the auguries, and the
official dignities, he used them, or disregarded them, in quest only of
power for himself. He was able to perceive how vain was law in such a
period as that in which he lived; and that, having risen by force of
arms, he must by force of arms keep his place or lose his life. With
him, at least, there was no idea of Roman liberty, little probably of
Roman glory, except so far as military glory and military power go
together.
Sulla was a man endowed with a much keener insight into the political
condition of the world around him. To make a dash for power, as a dog
might do, and keep it in his clutch as a dog would, was enough for
Marius. Sulla could see something of future events. He could understand
that, by reducing men around him to a low level, he could make fast his
own power over them, and that he could best do this by cutting off the
heads of all who stood a little higher than their neighbors. He might
thus produce tranquillity, and security to himself and others. Some
glimmer of an idea of an Augustan rule was present to him; and with the
view of producing it, he re-established many of the usages of the
Republic, not reproducing the liberty but the forms of liberty. It seems
to have been his idea that a Sullan party might rule the Empire by
adherence to these forms. I doubt if Marius had any fixed idea of
government. To get the better of his enemies, and then to grind them
into powder under his feet, to seize rank and power and riches, and then
to enjoy them, to sate his lust with blood and money and women, at last
even with wine, and to feed his revenge by remembering the hard things
which he was made to endure during the period of his overthrow--this
seems to have been enough for Marius.[53] With Sulla there was
understanding that the Empire must be ruled, and that the old ways would
be best if they could be made compatible with the newly-concentrated
power.
The immediate effect upon Rome, either from one or from the other, was
nearly the same. In the year 87 B.C. Marius occupied himself in
slaughtering the Sullan party--during which, however, Sulla escaped from
Rome to the army of which he was selected as General, and proceeded to
Athens and the East with the object of conquering Mithridates; for,
during these personal contests, the command of this expedition had been
the chief bone of contention among them. Marius, who was by age
unfitted, desired to obtain it in order that Sulla might not have it. In
the next year, 86 B.C., Marius died, being then Consul for the seventh
time. Sulla was away in the East, and did not return till 83 B.C. In the
interval was that period of peace, fit for study, of which Cicero
afterward spoke. "Triennium fere fuit urbs sine armis."[54] Cicero was
then twenty-two or twenty-three years old, and must well have
understood, from his remembrance of the Marian massacres, what it was to
have the city embroiled by arms. It was not that men were fighting, but
that they were simply being killed at the pleasure of the slaughterer.
Then Sulla came back, 83 B.C., when Cicero was twenty-four; and if
Marius had scourged the city with rods, he scourged it with scorpions.
It was the city, in truth, that was scourged, and not simply the hostile
faction. Sulla began by proscribing 520 citizens declaring that he had
included in his list all that he remembered, and that those forgotten
should be added on another day. The numbers were gradually raised to
4,700! Nor did this merely mean that those named should be caught and
killed by some miscalled officers of justice.[55] All the public was
armed against the wretched, and any who should protect them were also
doomed to death. This, however, might have been comparatively
inefficacious to inflict the amount of punishment intended by Sulla. Men
generally do not specially desire to imbrue their hands in the blood of
other men. Unless strong hatred be at work, the ordinary man, even the
ordinary Roman, will hardly rise up and slaughter another for the sake
of the employment. But if lucre be added to blood, then blood can be
made to flow copiously. This was what Sulla did. Not only was the
victim's life proscribed, but his property was proscribed also; and the
man who busied himself in carrying out the great butcher's business
assiduously, ardently, and unintermittingly, was rewarded by the
property so obtained. Two talents[56] was to be the fee for mere
assassination; but the man who knew how to carry on well the work of an
informer could earn many talents. It was thus that fortunes were made in
the last days of Sulla. It was not only those 520 who were named for
killing. They were but the firstlings of the flock--the few victims
selected before the real workmen understood how valuable a trade
proscription and confiscation might be made. Plutarch tells us how a
quiet gentleman walking, as was his custom, in the Forum, one who took
no part in politics, saw his own name one day on the list. He had an
Alban villa, and at once knew that his villa had been his ruin. He had
hardly read the list, and had made his exclamation, before he was
slaughtered. Such was the massacre of Sulla, coming with an interval of
two or three years after those of Marius, between which was the blessed
time in which Rome was without arms. In the time of Marius, Cicero was
too young, and of no sufficient importance, on account of his birth or
parentage, to fear anything. Nor is it probable that Marius would have
turned against his townsmen. When Sulla's turn came, Cicero, though not
absolutely connected with the Dictator, was, so to say, on his side in
politics. In going back even to this period we may use the terms
Liberals and Conservatives for describing the two parties. Marius was
for the people; that is to say, he was opposed to the rule of the
oligarchy, dispersed the Senate, and loved to feel that his own feet
were on the necks of the nobility. Of liberty, or rights, or popular
institutions he recked nothing; but not the less was he supposed to be
on the people's side. Sulla, on the other hand, had been born a
patrician, and affected to preserve the old traditions of oligarchic
rule; and, indeed, though he took all the power of the State into his
own hands, he did restore, and for a time preserve, these old
traditions. It must be presumed that there was at his heart something of
love for old Rome. The proscriptions began toward the end of the year 82
B.C., and were continued through eight or nine fearful months--up to the
beginning of June, 81 B.C. A day was fixed at which there should be no
more slaughtering--no more slaughtering, that is, without special order
in each case, and no more confiscation--except such as might be judged
necessary by those who had not as yet collected their prey from past
victims. Then Sulla, as Dictator, set himself to work to reorganize the
old laws. There should still be Consuls and Prætors, but with restricted
powers, lessened almost down to nothing. It seems hard to gather what
was exactly the Dictator's scheme as the future depositary of power when
he should himself have left the scene. He did increase the privileges of
the Senate; but thinking of the Senate of Rome as he must have thought
of it, esteeming those old men as lowly as he must have esteemed them,
he could hardly have intended that imperial power should be maintained
by dividing it among them. He certainly contemplated no follower to
himself, no heir to his power, as Cæsar did. When he had been
practically Dictator about three years--though he did not continue the
use of the objectionable name--he resigned his rule and walked down, as
it were, from his throne into private life. I know nothing in history
more remarkable than Sulla's resignation; and yet the writers who have
dealt with his name give no explanation of it. Plutarch, his biographer,
expresses wonder that he should have been willing to descend to private
life, and that he who made so many enemies should have been able to do
so with security. Cicero says nothing of it. He had probably left Rome
before it occurred, and did not return till after Sulla's death. It
seems to have been accepted as being in no especial way remarkable.[57]
At his own demand, the plenary power of Dictator had been given to
him--power to do all as he liked, without reference either to the Senate
or to the people, and with an added proviso that he should keep it as
long as he thought fit, and lay it down when it pleased him. He did lay
it down, flattering himself, probably, that, as he had done his work, he
would walk out from his dictatorship like some Camillus of old. There
had been no Dictator in Rome for more than a century and a quarter--not
since the time of Hannibal's great victories; and the old dictatorships
lasted but for a few months or weeks, after which the Dictator, having
accomplished the special task, threw up his office. Sulla now affected
to do the same; and Rome, after the interval of three years, accepted
the resignation in the old spirit. It was natural to them, though only
by tradition, that a Dictator should resign--so natural that it required
no special wonder. The salt of the Roman Constitution was gone, but the
remembrance of the savor of it was still sweet to the minds of the
Romans.
It seems certain that no attempt was made to injure Sulla when he ceased
to be nominally at the head of the army, but it is probable that he did
not so completely divest himself of power as to be without protection.
In the year after his abdication he died, at the age of sixty-one,
apparently strong as regards general health, but, if Plutarch's story be
true, affected with a terrible cutaneous disease. Modern writers have
spoken of Sulla as though they would fain have praised him if they
dared, because, in spite of his demoniac cruelty, he recognized the
expediency of bringing the affairs of the Republic again into order.
Middleton calls him the "only man in history in whom the odium of the
most barbarous cruelties was extinguished by the glory of his great
acts." Mommsen, laying the blame of the proscriptions on the head of the
oligarchy, speaks of Sulla as being either a sword or a pen in the
service of the State, as a sword or a pen would be required, and
declares that, in regard to the total "absence of political
selfishness--although it is true in this respect only--Sulla deserves to
be named side by side with Washington."[58] To us at present who are
endeavoring to investigate the sources and the nature of Cicero's
character, the attributes of this man would be but of little moment,
were it not that Cicero was probably Cicero because Sulla had been
Sulla. Horrid as the proscriptions and confiscations were to Cicero--and
his opinion of them was expressed plainly enough when it was dangerous
to express them[59]--still it was apparent to him that the cause of
order (what we may call the best chance for the Republic) lay with the
Senate and with the old traditions and laws of Rome, in the
re-establishment of which Sulla had employed himself. Of these
institutions Mommsen speaks with a disdain which we now cannot but feel
to be justified. "On the Roman oligarchy of this period," he says "no
judgment can be passed save one of inexorable and remorseless
condemnation; and, like everything connected with it, the Sullan
constitution is involved in that condemnation."[60] We have to admit
that the salt had gone out from it, and that there was no longer left
any savor by which it could be preserved. But the German historian seems
to err somewhat in this, as have also some modern English historians,
that they have not sufficiently seen that the men of the day had not the
means of knowing all that they, the historians, know. Sulla and his
Senate thought that by massacring the Marian faction they had restored
everything to an equilibrium. Sulla himself seems to have believed that
when the thing was accomplished Rome would go on, and grow in power and
prosperity as she had grown, without other reforms than those which he
had initiated. There can be no doubt that many of the best in Rome--the
best in morals, the best in patriotism, and the best in erudition--did
think that, with the old forms, the old virtue would come back. Pompey
thought so, and Cicero. Cato thought so, and Brutus. Cæsar, when he came
to think about it, thought the reverse. But even now to us, looking back
with so many things made clear to us, with all the convictions which
prolonged success produces, it is doubtful whether some other milder
change--some such change as Cicero would have advocated--might not have
prevented the tyranny of Augustus, the mysteries of Tiberius, the freaks
of Caligula, the folly of Claudius, and the madness of Nero.
It is an uphill task, that of advocating the cause of a man who has
failed. The Cæsars of the world are they who make interesting stories.
That Cicero failed in the great purpose of his life has to be
acknowledged. He had studied the history of his country, and was aware
that hitherto the world had produced nothing so great as Roman power;
and he knew that Rome had produced true patriotism. Her Consuls, her
Censors, her Tribunes, and her Generals had, as a rule, been true to
Rome, serving their country, at any rate till of late years, rather than
themselves. And he believed that liberty had existed in Rome, though
nowhere else. It would be well if we could realize the idea of liberty
which Cicero entertained. Liberty was very dear to him--dear to him not
only as enjoying it himself, but as a privilege for the enjoyment of
others. But it was only the liberty of a few. Half the population of the
Roman cities were slaves, and in Cicero's time the freedom of the city,
which he regarded as necessary to liberty, belonged only to a small
proportion of the population of Italy. It was the liberty of a small
privileged class for which he was anxious. That a Sicilian should be
free under a Roman Proconsul, as a Roman citizen was entitled to be, was
abhorrent to his doctrine. The idea of cosmopolitan freedom--an idea
which exists with us, but is not common to very many even now--had not
as yet been born: that care for freedom which springs from a desire to
do to others as we would that they should do to us. It required Christ
to father that idea; and Cicero, though he was nearer to Christianity
than any who had yet existed, had not reached it. But this liberty,
though it was but of a few, was so dear to him that he spent his life in
an endeavor to preserve it. The kings had been expelled from Rome
because they had trampled on liberty. Then came the Republic, which we
know to have been at its best no more than an oligarchy; but still it
was founded on the idea that everything should be done by the votes of
the free people. For many years everything was done by the votes of the
free people. Under what inducements they had voted is another question.
Clients were subject to their patrons, and voted as they were told. We
have heard of that even in England, where many of us still think that
such a way of voting is far from objectionable. Perhaps compulsion was
sometimes used--a sort of "rattening" by which large bodies were driven
to the poll to carry this or the other measure. Simple eloquence
prevailed with some, and with others flattery. Then corruption became
rampant, as was natural, the rich buying the votes of the poor; and
votes were bought in various ways--by cheap food as well as by money, by
lavish expenditure in games, by promises of land, and other means of
bribery more or less overt. This was bad, of course. Every freeman
should have given a vote according to his conscience. But in what
country--the millennium not having arrived in any--has this been
achieved? Though voting in England has not always been pure, we have not
wished to do away with the votes of freemen and to submit everything to
personal rule. Nor did Cicero.
He knew that much was bad, and had himself seen many things that were
very evil. He had lived through the dominations of Marius and Sulla, and
had seen the old practices of Roman government brought down to the
pretence of traditional forms. But still, so he thought, there was life
left in the old forms, if they could be revivified by patriotism, labor,
and intelligence. It was the best that he could imagine for the
State--infinitely better than the chance of falling into the bloody
hands of one Marius and one Sulla after another. Mommsen tells us that
nothing could be more rotten than the condition of oligarchical
government into which Rome had fallen; and we are inclined to agree with
Mommsen, because we have seen what followed. But that Cicero, living and
seeing it all as a present spectator, should have hoped better things,
should not, I think, cause us to doubt either Cicero's wisdom or his
patriotism. I cannot but think that, had I been a Roman of those days, I
should have preferred Cicero, with his memories of the past, to Cæsar,
with his ambition for the future.
Looking back from our standing-point of to-day, we know how great Rome
was--infinitely greater, as far as power is concerned, than anything
else which the world has produced. It came to pass that "Urbis et orbis"
was not a false boast. Gradually growing from the little nest of robbers
established on the banks of the Tiber, the people of Rome learned how to
spread their arms over all the known world, and to conquer and rule,
while they drew to themselves all that the ingenuity and industry of
other people had produced. To do this, there must have been not only
courage and persistence, but intelligence, patriotism, and superior
excellence in that art of combination of which government consists. But
yet, when we look back, it is hard to say when were the palmy days of
Rome. When did those virtues shine by which her power was founded? When
was that wisdom best exhibited from which came her capacity for ruling?
Not in the time of her early kings, whose mythic virtues, if they
existed, were concerned but in small matters; for the Rome of the kings
claimed a jurisdiction extending as yet but a few miles from the city.
And from the time of their expulsion, Rome, though she was rising in
power, was rising slowly, and through such difficulties that the reader
of history, did he not know the future, would think from time to time
that the day of her destruction had come upon her. Not when Brennus was
at Rome with his Gauls, a hundred and twenty-five years after the
expulsion of the kings, could Rome be said to have been great; nor when,
fifty or sixty years afterward, the Roman army--the only army which Rome
then possessed--had to lay down its arms in the Caudine Forks and pass
under the Samnite yoke. Then, when the Samnite wars were ended, and Rome
was mistress in Italy--mistress, after all, of no more than Southern
Italy--the Punic wars began. It could hardly have been during that long
contest with Carthage, which was carried on for nearly fifty years, that
the palmy days of Rome were at their best. Hannibal seems always to be
the master. Trebia, Thrasymene and Cannæ, year after year, threaten
complete destruction to the State. Then comes the great Scipio; and no
doubt, if we must mark an era of Roman greatness, it would be that of
the battle of Zama and the submission of Carthage, 201 years before
Christ. But with Scipio there springs up the idea of personal ambition;
and in the Macedonian and Greek wars that follow, though the arm of Rome
is becoming stronger every day, and her shoulders broader, there is
already the glamour of her decline in virtue. Her dealings with
Antiochus, with Pyrrhus, and with the Achæans, though successful, were
hardly glorious. Then came the two Gracchi, and the reader begins to
doubt whether the glory of the Republic is not already over. They
demanded impossible reforms, by means as illegal as they were
impossible, and were both killed in popular riots. The war with Jugurtha
followed, in which the Romans were for years unsuccessful, and during
which German hordes from the north rushed into Gaul and destroyed an
army of 80,000 Romans. This brings us to Marius and to Sulla, of whom we
have already spoken, and to that period of Roman politics which the
German historian describes as being open to no judgment "save one of
inexorable and remorseless condemnation."
But, in truth, the history of every people and every nation will be
subject to the same criticism, if it be regarded with the same severity.
In all that man has done as yet in the way of government, the seeds of
decay are apparent when looked back upon from an age in advance. The
period of Queen Elizabeth was very great to us; yet by what dangers were
we enveloped in her days! But for a storm at sea, we might have been
subjected to Spain. By what a system of falsehood and petty tyrannies
were we governed through the reigns of James I. and Charles I.! What
periods of rottenness and danger there have been since! How little
glorious was the reign of Charles II.! how full of danger that of
William! how mean those of the four Georges, with the dishonesty of
ministers such as Walpole and Newcastle! And to-day, are there not many
who are telling us that we are losing the liberties which our
forefathers got for us, and that no judgment can be passed on us "save
one of inexorable and remorseless condemnation?" We are a great nation,
and the present threatenings are probably vain. Nevertheless, the seeds
of decay are no doubt inherent in our policies and our practices--so
manifestly inherent that future historians will pronounce upon them with
certainty.
But Cicero, not having the advantage of distance, having simply in his
mind the knowledge of the greatness which had been achieved, and in his
heart a true love for the country which had achieved it, and which was
his own, encouraged himself to think that the good might be recovered
and the bad eliminated. Marius and Sulla--Pompey also, toward the end of
his career, if I can read his character rightly--Cæsar, and of course
Augustus, being all destitute of scruple, strove to acquire, each for
himself, the power which the weak hands of the Senate were unable to
grasp. However much, or however little, the country of itself might have
been to any of them, it seemed good to him, whether for the country's
sake or for his own, that the rule should be in his own hands. Each had
the opportunity, and each used it, or tried to use it. With Cicero there
is always present the longing to restore the power to the old
constitutional possessors of it. So much is admitted, even by his bitter
enemies; and I am sometimes at a loss whether to wonder most that a man
of letters, dead two thousand years ago, should have enemies so bitter
or a friend so keenly in earnest about him as I am. Cicero was aware
quite as well as any who lived then, if he did not see the matter
clearer even than any others, that there was much that was rotten in the
State. Men who had been murderers on behalf of Marius, and then others
who had murdered on behalf of Sulla--among whom that Catiline, of whom
we have to speak presently, had been one--were not apt to settle
themselves down as quiet citizens. The laws had been set aside. Even the
law courts had been closed. Sulla had been law, and the closets of his
favorites had been the law courts. Senators had been cowed and obedient.
The Tribunes had only been mock Tribunes. Rome, when Cicero began his
public life, was still trembling. The Consuls of the day were men chosen
at Sulla's command. The army was Sulla's army. The courts were now again
opened by Sulla's permission. The day fixed by Sulla when murderers
might no longer murder--or, at any rate, should not be paid for
murdering--had arrived. There was not, one would say, much hope for good
things. But Sulla had reproduced the signs of order, and the best hope
lay in that direction. Consuls, Prætors, Quæstors, Ædiles, even
Tribunes, were still there. Perhaps it might be given to him, to Cicero,
to strengthen the hands of such officers. At any rate, there was no
better course open to him by which he could serve his country.
The heaviest accusation brought against Cicero charges him with being
insincere to the various men with whom he was brought in contact in
carrying out the purpose of his life, and he has also been accused of
having changed his purpose. It has been alleged that, having begun life
as a democrat, he went over to the aristocracy as soon as he had secured
his high office of State. As we go on, it will be my object to show that
he was altogether sincere in his purpose, that he never changed his
political idea, and that, in these deviations as to men and as to means,
whether, for instance, he was ready to serve Cæsar or to oppose him, he
was guided, even in the insincerity of his utterances, by the sincerity
of his purpose. I think that I can remember, even in Great Britain, even
in the days of Queen Victoria, men sitting check by jowl on the same
Treasury bench who have been very bitter to each other with anything but
friendly words. With us fidelity in friendship is, happily, a virtue. In
Rome expediency governed everything. All I claim for Cicero is, that he
was more sincere than others around him.