CHAPTER XII.

_HIS EXILE._

We now come to that period of Cicero's life in which, by common consent

of all who have hitherto written of him, he is supposed to have shown

himself as least worthy of his high name. Middleton, who certainly loved

his hero's memory and was always anxious to do him justice, condemns

him. "It cannot be denied that in this calamity of his exile he did not

behave himself with that firmness which might reasonably be expected

from one who had borne so glorious a part in the Republic." Morabin, the

French biographer, speaks of the wailings of his grief, of its injustice

and its follies. "Cicéron était trop plein de son malheur pour donner

entrée à de nouvelles espérances," he says. "Il avait supporté ce

malheur avec peu de courage," says another Frenchman, M. Du Rozoir, in

introducing us to the speeches which Cicero made on his return. Dean

Merivale declares that "he marred the grace of the concession in the

eyes of posterity"--alluding to the concession made to popular feeling

by his voluntary departure from Rome, as will hereafter be

described--"by the unmanly lamentations with which he accompanied it."

Mommsen, with a want of insight into character wonderful in an author

who has so closely studied the history of the period, speaks of his

exile as a punishment inflicted on a "man notoriously timid, and

belonging to the class of political weather-cocks." "We now come," says

Mr. Forsyth, "to the most melancholy period of Cicero's life, melancholy

not so much from its nature and the extent of the misfortunes which

overtook him, as from the abject prostration of mind into which he was

thrown." Mr. Froude, as might be expected, uses language stronger than

that of others, and tells us that "he retired to Macedonia to pour out

his sorrows and his resentments in lamentations unworthy of a woman." We

have to admit that modern historians and biographers have been united in

accusing Cicero of want of manliness during his exile. I propose--not,

indeed, to wash the blackamoor white--but to show, if I can, that he was

as white as others might be expected to have been in similar

circumstances.

We are, I think, somewhat proud of the courage shown by public men of

our country who have suffered either justly or unjustly under the laws.

Our annals are bloody, and many such have had to meet their death. They

have done so generally with becoming manliness. Even though they may

have been rebels against the powers of the day, their memories have been

made green because they have fallen like brave men. Sir Thomas More, who

was no rebel, died well, and crowned a good life by his manner of

leaving it. Thomas Cromwell submitted to the axe without a complaint.

Lady Jane Grey, when on the scaffold, yielded nothing in manliness to

the others. Cranmer and the martyr bishops perished nobly. The Earl of

Essex, and Raleigh, and Strafford, and Strafford's master showed no fear

when the fatal moment came. In reading the fate of each, we sympathize

with the victim because of a certain dignity at the moment of death. But

there is, I think, no crisis of life in which it is so easy for a man to

carry himself honorably as that in which he has to leave it. "Venit

summa dies et ineluctabile tempus." No doubting now can be of avail. No

moment is left for the display of conduct beyond this, which requires

only decorum and a free use of the pulses to become in some degree

glorious. The wretch from the lowest dregs of the people can achieve it

with a halter round his neck. Cicero had that moment also to face; and

when it came he was as brave as the best Englishman of them all. But of

those I have named no one had an Atticus to whom it had been the

privilege of his life to open his very soul, in language so charming as

to make it worth posterity's while to read it, to study it, to sift it,

and to criticise it. Wolsey made many plaints in his misery, but they

have reached us in such forms of grace that they do not disparage him;

but then he too had no Atticus. Shaftesbury and Bolingbroke were

dismissed ministers and doomed to live in exile, the latter for many

years, and felt, no doubt, strongly their removal from the glare of

public life to obscurity. We hear no complaint from them which can

justify some future critic in saying that their wails were unworthy of a

woman; but neither of them was capable of telling an Atticus the

thoughts of his mind as they rose. What other public man ever had an

Atticus to whom, in the sorrows which the ingratitude of friends had

brought upon him, he could disclose every throb of his heart?

I think that we are often at a loss, in our efforts at appreciation of

character, and in the expressions of our opinion respecting it, to

realize the meaning of courage and manliness. That sententious Swedish

Queen, one of whose foolish maxims I have quoted, has said that Cicero,

though a coward, was capable of great actions, because she did not know

what a coward was. To doubt--to tremble with anxiety--to vacillate

hither and thither between this course and the other as to which may be

the better--to complain within one's own breast that this or that thing

has been an injustice--to hesitate within one's self, not quite knowing

which way honor may require us to go--to be indignant even at fancied

wrongs--to rise in wrath against another, and then, before the hour has

passed, to turn that wrath against one's self--that is not to be a

coward. To know what duty requires, and then to be deterred by fear of

results--that is to be a coward; but the man of many scruples may be the

greatest hero of them all. Let the law of things be declared clearly so

that the doubting mind shall no longer doubt, so that scruples may be

laid at rest, so that the sense of justice may be satisfied--and he of

whom I speak shall be ready to meet the world in arms against him. There

are men, very useful in their way, who shall never doubt at all, but

shall be ready, as the bull is ready, to encounter any obstacles that

there may be before them. I will not say but that for the coarse

purposes of the world they may not be the most efficacious, but I will

not admit that they are therefore the bravest. The bull, who has no

imagination to tell him what the obstacle may do to him, is not brave.

He is brave who, fully understanding the potentiality of the obstacle,

shall, for a sufficient purpose, move against it.

This Cicero always did. He braved the murderous anger of Sulla when, as

a young man, he thought it well to stop the greed of Sulla's minions. He

trusted himself amid the dangers prepared for him, when it was necessary

that with extraordinary speed he should get together the evidence needed

for the prosecution of Verres. He was firm against all that Catiline

attempted for his destruction, and had courage enough for the

responsibility when he thought it expedient to doom the friends of

Catiline to death. In defending Milo, whether the cause were good or

bad, he did not blench.[267] He joined the Republican army in Macedonia

though he distrusted Pompey and his companions. When he thought that

there was a hope for the Republic, he sprung at Antony with all the

courage of a tigress protecting her young; and when all had failed and

was rotten around him, when the Republic had so fallen that he knew it

to be gone--then he was able to give his neck to the swordsman with all

the apparent indifference of life which was displayed by those

countrymen of our own whom I have named.

But why did he write so piteously when he was driven into exile? Why, at

any rate, did he turn upon his chosen friend and scold him, as though

that friend had not done enough for friendship? Why did he talk of

suicide as though by that he might find the easiest way of escape?

I hold it to be natural that a man should wail to himself under a sense,

not simply of misfortune, but of misfortune coming to him from the

injustice of others, and specially from the ingratitude of friends.

Afflictions which come to us from natural causes, such as sickness and

physical pain, or from some chance such as the loss of our money by the

breaking of a bank, an heroic man will bear without even inward

complainings. But a sense of wrong done to him by friends will stir him,

not by the misery inflicted, but because of the injustice; and that

which he says to himself he will say to his wife, if his wife be to him

a second self, or to his friend, if he have one so dear to him. The

testimony by which the writers I have named have been led to treat

Cicero so severely has been found in the letters which he wrote during

his exile; and of these letters all but one were addressed either to

Atticus or to his wife or to his brother.[268] Twenty-seven of them were

to Atticus. Before he accepted a voluntary exile, as the best solution

of the difficulty in which he was placed--for it was voluntary at first,

as will be seen--he applied to the Consul Piso for aid, and for the same

purpose visited Pompey. So far he was a suppliant, but this he did in

conformity with Roman usage. In asking favor of a man in power there was

held to be no disgrace, even though the favor asked were one improper to

be granted, which was not the case with Cicero. And he went about the

Forum in mourning--"sordidatus"--as was the custom with men on their

trial. We cannot doubt that in each of these cases he acted with the

advice of his friends. His conduct and his words after his return from

exile betray exultation rather than despondency.

It is from the letters which he wrote to Atticus that he has been

judged--from words boiling with indignation that such a one as he should

have been surrendered by the Rome that he had saved, by those friends to

whom he had been so true to be trampled on by such a one as Clodius!

When a man has written words intended for the public ear, it is fair

that he should bear the brunt of them, be it what it may. He has

intended them for public effect, and if they are used against him he

should not complain. But here the secret murmurings of the man's soul

were sent forth to his choicest friend, with no idea that from them

would he be judged by the "historians to come in 600 years,"[269] of

whose good word he thought so much. "Quid vero historiæ de nobis ad

annos DC. prædicarint!" he says, to Atticus. How is it that from them,

after 2000 years, the Merivales, Mommsens, and Froudes condemn their

great brother in letters whose lightest utterances have been found

worthy of so long a life! Is there not an injustice in falling upon a

man's private words, words when written intended only for privacy, and

making them the basis of an accusation in which an illustrious man shall

be arraigned forever as a coward? It is said that he was unjust even to

Atticus, accusing even Atticus of lukewarmness. What if he did so--for

an hour? Is that an affair of ours? Did Atticus quarrel with him? Let

any reader of these words who has lived long enough to have an old

friend, ask himself whether there has never been a moment of anger in

his heart--of anger of which he has soon learned to recognize the

injustice? He may not have written his anger, but then, perhaps, he has

not had the pen of a Cicero. Let those who rebuke the unmanliness of

Cicero's wailings remember what were his sufferings. The story has yet

to be told, but I may in rough words describe their nature. Everything

was to be taken from him: all that he had--his houses, his books, his

pleasant gardens, his busts and pictures, his wide retinue of slaves,

and possessions lordly as are those of our dukes and earls. He was

driven out from Italy and so driven that no place of delight could be

open to him. Sicily, where he had friends, Athens, where he might have

lived, were closed against him. He had to look where to live, and did

live for a while on money borrowed from his friends. All the cherished

occupations of his life were over for him--the law courts, the Forum,

the Senate, and the crowded meetings of Roman citizens hanging on his

words. The circumstances of his exile separated him from his wife and

children, so that he was alone. All this was assured to him for life, as

far as Roman law could assure it. Let us think of the condition of some

great and serviceable Englishman in similar circumstances. Let us

suppose that Sir Robert Peel had been impeached, and forced by some

iniquitous sentence to live beyond the pale of civilization: that the

houses at Whitehall Gardens and at Drayton had been confiscated,

dismantled, and levelled to the ground, and his rents and revenues made

over to his enemies; that everything should have been done to destroy

him by the country he had served, except the act of taking away that

life which would thus have been made a burden to him. Would not his case

have been more piteous, a source of more righteous indignation, than

that even of the Mores or Raleighs? He suffered under invectives in the

House of Commons, and we sympathized with him; but if some Clodius of

the day could have done this to him, should we have thought the worse of

him had he opened his wounds to his wife, or to his brother, or to his

friend of friends?

Had Cicero put an end to his life in his exile, as he thought of doing,

he would have been a second Cato to admiring posterity, and some Lucan

with rolling verses would have told us narratives of his valor. The

judges of to-day look back to his half-formed purposes in this direction

as being an added evidence of the weakness of the man; but had he let

himself blood and have perished in his bath, he would have been thought

to have escaped from life as honorably as did Junius Brutus It is

because he dared to live on that we are taught to think so little of

him,--because he had antedated Christianity so far as to feel when the

moment came that such an escape was, in truth, unmanly. He doubted, and

when the deed had not been done he expressed regret that he had allowed

himself to live. But he did not do it,--as Cato would have done, or

Brutus.

It may be as well here to combat, in as few words as possible, the

assertions which have been made that Cicero, having begun life as a

democrat, discarded his colors as soon as he had received from the

people those honors for which he had sought popularity. They who have

said so have taken their idea from the fact that, in much of his early

forensic work, he spoke against the aristocratic party. He attacked

Sulla, through his favorite Chrysogonus, in his defence of Roscius

Amerinus. He afterward defended a woman of Arretium in the spirit of

antagonism to Sulla. His accusation of Verres was made on the same side

in politics, and was carried on in opposition to Hortensius and the

oligarchs. He defended the Tribune Caius Cornelius. Then, when he became

Consul, he devoted himself to the destruction of Catiline, who was

joined with many, perhaps with Cæsar's sympathy, in the conspiracy for

the overthrow of the Republic. Cæsar soon became the leader of the

democracy,--became rather what Mommsen describes as "Democracy" itself;

and as Cicero had defended the Senate from Catiline, and had refused to

attach himself to Cæsar, he is supposed to have turned from the

political ideas of his youth, and to have become a Conservative when

Conservative ideas suited his ambition.

I will not accept the excuse put forward on his behalf, that the early

speeches were made on the side of democracy because the exigencies of

the occasion required him to so devote his energies as an advocate. No

doubt he was an advocate, as are our barristers of to-day, and, as an

advocate, supported this side or that; but we shall be wrong if we

suppose that the Roman "patronus" supplied his services under such

inducements. With us a man goes into the profession of the law with the

intention of making money, and takes the cases right and left, unless

there be special circumstances which may debar him from doing so with

honor. It is a point of etiquette with him to give his assistance, in

turn, as he may be called on; so much so, that leading men are not

unfrequently employed on one side simply that they may not be employed

on the other side. It should not be urged on the part of Cicero that, so

actuated, he defended Amerinus, a case in which he took part against the

aristocrats, or defended Publius Sulla, in doing which he appeared on

the side of the aristocracy. Such a defence of his conduct would be

misleading, and might be confuted. It would be confuted by those who

suppose him to have been "notoriously a political trimmer," as Mommsen

has[270] called him; or a "deserter," as he was described by Dio Cassius

and by the Pseudo-Sallust,[271] by showing that in fact he took up

causes under the influence of strong personal motives such as rarely

govern an English barrister. These motives were in many cases partly

political; but they operated in such a manner as to give no guide to his

political views. In defending Sulla's nephew he was moved, as far as we

know, solely by private motives. In defending Amerinus he may be said to

have attacked Sulla. His object was to stamp out the still burning

embers of Sulla's cruelty; but not the less was he wedded to Sulla's

general views as to the restoration of the authority of the Senate. In

his early speeches, especially in that spoken against Verres, he

denounces the corruption of the senatorial judges; but at that very

period of his life he again and again expresses his own belief in the

glory and majesty of the Senate. In accusing Verres he accused the

general corruption of Rome's provincial governors; and as they were

always past-Consuls or past-Prætors, and had been the elite of the

aristocracy, he may be said so far to have taken the part of a democrat;

but he had done so only so far as he had found himself bound by a sense

of duty to put a stop to corruption. The venality of the judges and the

rapacity of governors had been fit objects for his eloquence; but I deny

that he can be fairly charged with having tampered with democracy

because he had thus used his eloquence on behalf of the people.

He was no doubt stirred by other political motives less praiseworthy,

though submitted to in accordance with the practice and the known usages

of Rome. He had undertaken to speak for Catiline when Catiline was

accused of corruption on his return from Africa, knowing that Catiline

had been guilty. He did not do so; but the intention, for our present

purpose, is the same as the doing. To have defended Catiline would have

assisted him in his operations as a candidate for the Consulship.

Catiline was a bad subject for a defence--as was Fonteius, whom he

certainly did defend--and Catiline was a democrat. But Cicero, had he

defended Catiline, would not have done so as holding out his hand to

democracy. Cicero, when, in the Pro Lege Manilia, he for the first time

addressed the people, certainly spoke in opposition to the wishes of the

Senate in proposing that Pompey should have the command of the

Mithridatic war; but his views were not democratic. It has been said

that this was done because Pompey could help him to the Consulship. To

me it seems that he had already declared to himself that among leading

men in Rome Pompey was the one to whom the Republic would look with the

most security as a bulwark, and that on that account he had resolved to

bind himself to Pompey in some political marriage. Be that as it may,

there was no tampering with democracy in the speech Pro Lege Manilia. Of

all the extant orations made by him before his Consulship, the attentive

reader will sympathize the least with that of Fonteius. After his

scathing onslaught on Verres for provincial plunder, he defended the

plunderer of the Gauls, and held up the suffering allies of Rome to

ridicule as being hardly entitled to good government. This he did simply

as an advocate, without political motive of any kind--in the days in

which he was supposed to be currying favor with democracy--governed by

private friendship, looking forward, probably, to some friendly office

in return, as was customary. It was thus that afterward he defended

Antony, his colleague in the Consulship, whom he knew to have been a

corrupt governor. Autronius had been a party to Catiline's conspiracy,

and Autronius had been Cicero's school-fellow; but Cicero, for some

reserved reason with which we are not acquainted, refused to plead for

Autronius. There is, I maintain, no ground for suggesting that Cicero

had shown by his speeches before his Consulship any party adherence. The

declaration which he made after his Consulship, in the speech for Sulla,

that up to the time of Catiline's first conspiracy forensic duties had

not allowed him to devote himself to party politics, is entitled to

belief: we know, indeed, that it was so. As Quæstor, as Ædile, and as

Prætor, he did not interfere in the political questions of Rome, except

in demanding justice from judges and purity from governors. When he

became Consul then he became a politician, and after that there was

certainly no vacillation in his views. Critics say that he surrendered

himself to Cæsar when Cæsar became master. We shall come to that

hereafter; but the accusation with which I am dealing now is that which

charges him with having abandoned the democratic memories of his youth

as soon as he had enveloped himself with the consular purple. There had

been no democratic promises, and there was no change when he became

Consul.

In truth, Cicero's political convictions were the same from the

beginning to the end of his career, with a consistency which is by no

means usual in politicians; for though, before his Consulship, he had

not taken up politics as a business he had entertained certain political

views, as do all men who live in public. From the first to the last we

may best describe him by the word we have now in use, as a conservative.

The government of Rome had been an oligarchy for many years, though much

had been done by the citizens to reduce the thraldom which an oligarchy

is sure to exact. To that oligarchy Cicero was bound by all the

convictions, by all the practices, and by all the prejudices of his

life. When he speaks of a Republic he speaks of a people and of an

Empire governed by an oligarchy; he speaks of a power to be kept in the

hands of a few--for the benefit of the few, and of the many if it might

be--but at any rate in the hands of a few. That those few should be so

select as to admit of no new-comers among them, would probably have been

a portion of his political creed, had he not been himself a "novus

homo." As he was the first of his family to storm the barrier of the

fortress, he had been forced to depend much on popular opinion; but not

on that account had there been any dealings between him and democracy.

That the Empire should be governed according to the old oligarchical

forms which had been in use for more than four centuries, and had

created the power of Rome--that was his political creed. That Consuls,

Censors, and Senators might go on to the end of time with no diminution

of their dignity, but with great increase of justice and honor and truth

among them--that was his political aspiration. They had made Rome what

it was, and he knew and could imagine nothing better; and, odious as an

oligarchy is seen to be under the strong light of experience to which

prolonged ages has subjected it, the aspiration on his part was noble.

He has been wrongly accused of deserting "that democracy with which he

had flirted in his youth." There had been no democracy in his youth,

though there had existed such a condition in the time of the Gracchi.

There was none in his youth and none in his age. That which has been

wrongly called democracy was conspiracy--not a conspiracy of democrats

such as led to our Commonwealth, or to the American Independence, or to

the French Revolution; but conspiracy of a few nobles for the better

assurance of the plunder, and the power, and the high places of the

Empire. Of any tendency toward democracy no man has been less justly

accused than Cicero, unless it might be Cæsar. To Cæsar we must accord

the merit of having seen that a continuation of the old oligarchical

forms was impracticable This Cicero did not see. He thought that the

wounds inflicted by the degeneracy and profligacy of individuals were

curable. It is attributed to Cæsar that he conceived the grand idea of

establishing general liberty under the sole dominion of one great, and

therefore beneficent, ruler. I think he saw no farther than that he, by

strategy, management, and courage might become this ruler, whether

beneficent or the reverse. But here I think that it becomes the writer,

whether he be historian, biographer, or fill whatever meaner position he

may in literature, to declare that no beneficence can accompany such a

form of government. For all temporary sleekness, for metropolitan

comfort and fatness, the bill has to be paid sooner or later in

ignorance, poverty, and oppression. With an oligarchy there will be

other, perhaps graver, faults; but with an oligarchy there will be salt,

though it be among a few. There will be a Cicero now and again--or at

least a Cato. From the dead, stagnant level of personal despotism there

can be no rising to life till corruption paralyzes the hands of power,

and the fabric falls by its own decay Of this no proof can be found in

the world's history so manifest as that taught by the Roman Empire.

I think it is made clear by a study of Cicero's life and works, up to

the period of his exile, that an adhesion to the old forms of the Roman

Government was his guiding principle. I am sure that they who follow me

to the close of his career will acknowledge that after his exile he

lived for this principle, and that he died for it. "Respublica," the

Republic, was the one word which to his ear contained a political charm.

It was the shibboleth by which men were to be conjured into well-being.

The word constitution is nearly as potent with us. But it is essential

that the reader of Roman history and Roman biography should understand

that the appellation had in it, for all Roman ears, a thoroughly

conservative meaning. Among those who at Cicero's period dealt with

politics in Rome--all of whom, no doubt, spoke of the Republic as the

vessel of State which was to be defended by all persons--there were four

classes. These were they who simply desired the plunder of the

State--the Catilines, the Sullas of the day, and the Antonys; men such

as Verres had been, and Fonteius, and Autronius. The other three can be

best typified each by one man. There was Cæsar, who knew that the

Republic was gone, past all hope. There was Cato--"the dogmatical fool

Cato" as Mommsen calls him, perhaps with some lack of the historian's

dignity--who was true to the Republic, who could not bend an inch, and

was thus as detrimental to any hope of reconstruction as a Catiline or a

Cæsar. Cicero was of the fourth class, believing in the Republic, intent

on saving it, imbued amid all his doubts with a conviction that if the

"optimates" or "boni"--the leading men of the party--would be true to

themselves, Consuls, Censors, and Senate would still suffice to rule the

world; but prepared to give and take with those who were opposed to him.

It was his idea that political integrity should keep its own hands

clean, but should wink at much dirt in the world at large. Nothing, he

saw, could be done by Catonic rigor. We can see now that Ciceronic

compromises were, and must have been, equally ineffective. The patient

was past cure. But in seeking the truth as to Cicero, we have to

perceive that amid all his doubts, frequently in despondency, sometimes

overwhelmed by the misery and hopelessness of his condition, he did hold

fast by this idea to the end. The frequent expressions made to Atticus

in opposition to this belief are to be taken as the murmurs of his mind

at the moment; as you shall hear a man swear that all is gone, and see

him tear his hair, and shall yet know that there is a deep fund of hope

within his bosom. It was the ingratitude of his political friends, his

"boni" and his "optimates," of Pompey as their head, which tried him the

sorest; but he was always forgiving them, forgiving Pompey as the head

of them, because he knew that, were he to be severed from them, then the

political world must be closed to him altogether.

Of Cicero's strength or Cicero's weakness Pompey seems to have known

nothing. He was no judge of men. Cæsar measured him with a great

approach to accuracy. Cæsar knew him to be the best Roman of his day;

one who, if he could be brought over to serve in Cæsarean ranks, would

be invaluable--because of his honesty, his eloquence, and his

capability; but he knew him as one who must be silenced if he were not

brought to serve on the Cæsarean side. Such a man, however, might be

silenced for a while--taught to perceive that his efforts were vain--and

then brought into favor by further overtures, and made of use.

Personally he was pleasant to Cæsar, who had taste enough to know that

he was a man worthy of all personal dignity. But Cæsar was not, I think,

quite accurate in his estimation, having allowed himself to believe at

the last that Cicero's energy on behalf of the Republic had been

quelled.

[Sidenote: B.C. 58, ætat. 49.]

Now we will go back to the story of Cicero's exile. Gradually during the

preceding year he had learned that Clodius was preparing to attack him,

and to doubt whether he could expect protection from the Triumvirate.

That he could be made safe by the justice either of the people or by

that of any court before which he could be tried, seems never to have

occurred to him. He knew the people and he knew the courts too well.

Pompey no doubt might have warded off the coming evil; such at least was

Cicero's idea. To him Pompey was the greatest political power as yet

extant in Rome; but he was beginning to believe that Pompey would be

untrue to him. When he had sent to Pompey a long account of the grand

doings of his Consulship, Pompey had replied with faintest praises. He

had rejected the overtures of the Triumvirate. In the last letter to

Atticus in the year before, written in August,[272] he had declared that

the Republic was ruined; that they who had brought things to this

pass--meaning the Triumvirate--were hostile; but, for himself, he was

confident in saying that he was quite safe in the good will of men

around him. There is a letter to his brother written in November, the

next letter in the collection, in which he says that Pompey and Cæsar

promise him everything. With the exception of two letters of

introduction, we have nothing from him till he writes to Atticus from

the first scene of his exile.

When the new year commenced, Clodius was Tribune of the people, and

immediately was active. Piso and Gabinius were Consuls. Piso was kinsman

to Piso Frugi, who had married Cicero's daughter,[273]and was expected

to befriend Cicero at this crisis. But Clodius procured the allotment of

Syria and Macedonia to the two Consuls by the popular vote. They were

provinces rich in plunder; and it was matter of importance for a Consul

to know that the prey which should come to him as Proconsul should be

worthy of his grasp. They were, therefore, ready to support the Tribune

in what he proposed to do. It was necessary to Cicero's enemies that

there should be some law by which Cicero might be condemned. It would

not be within the power of Clodius, even with the Triumvirate at his

back, to drive the man out of Rome and out of Italy, without an alleged

cause. Though justice had been tabooed, law was still in vogue. Now

there was a matter as to which Cicero was open to attack. As Consul he

had caused certain Roman citizens to be executed as conspirators, in the

teeth of a law which enacted that no Roman citizen should be condemned

to die except by a direct vote of the people. It had certainly become a

maxim of the constitution of the Republic that a citizen should not be

made to suffer death except by the voice of the people. The Valerian,

the Porcian, and the Sempronian laws had all been passed to that effect.

Now there had been no popular vote as to the execution of Lentulus and

the other conspirators, who had been taken red-handed in Rome in the

affair of Catiline. Their death had been decreed by the Senate, and the

decree of the Senate had been carried out by Cicero; but no decree of

the Senate had the power of a law. In spite of that decree the old law

was in force; and no appeal to the people had been allowed to Lentulus.

But there had grown up in the constitution a practice which had been

supposed to override the Valerian and Porcian laws. In certain

emergencies the Senate would call upon the Consuls to see that the

Republic should suffer no injury, and it had been held that at such

moments the Consuls were invested with an authority above all law.

Cicero had been thus strengthened when, as Consul, he had struggled with

Catiline; but it was an open question, as Cicero himself very well knew.

In the year of his Consulship--the very year in which Lentulus and the

others had been strangled--he had defended Rabirius, who was then

accused of having killed a citizen thirty years before. Rabirius was

charged with having slaughtered the Tribune Saturninus by consular

authority, the Consuls of the day having been ordered to defend the

Republic, as Cicero had been ordered. Rabirius probably had not killed

Saturninus, nor did any one now care whether he had done so or not. The

trial had been brought about notoriously by the agency of Cæsar, who

caused himself to be selected by the Prætor as one of the two judges for

the occasion;[274] and Cæsar's object as notoriously was to lessen the

authority of the Senate, and to support the democratic interest. Both

Cicero and Hortensius defended Rabirius, but he was condemned by Cæsar,

and, as we are told, himself only escaped by using that appeal to the

people in support of which he had himself been brought to trial. In

this, as in so many of the forensic actions of the day, there had been

an admixture of violence and law. We must, I think, acknowledge that

there was the same leaven of illegality in the proceedings against

Lentulus. It had no doubt been the intention of the constitution that a

Consul, in the heat of an emergency, should use his personal authority

for the protection of the Commonwealth, but it cannot be alleged that

there was such an emergency, when the full Senate had had time to debate

on the fate of the Catiline criminals. Both from Cæsar's words as

reported by Sallust, and from Cicero's as given to us by himself, we are

aware that an idea of the illegality of the proceeding was present in

the minds of Senators at the moment. But, though law was loved at Rome,

all forensic and legislative proceedings were at this time carried on

with monstrous illegality. Consuls consulted the heavens falsely;

Tribunes used their veto violently; judges accepted bribes openly; the

votes of the people were manipulated fraudulently. In the trial and

escape of Rabirius, the laws were despised by those who pretended to

vindicate them. Clodius had now become a Tribune by the means of certain

legal provision, but yet in opposition to all law. In the conduct of the

affair against Catiline Cicero seems to have been actuated by pure

patriotism, and to have been supported by a fine courage; but he knew

that in destroying Lentulus and Cethegus he subjected himself to certain

dangers. He had willingly faced these dangers for the sake of the object

in view. As long as he might remain the darling of the people, as he was

at that moment, he would no doubt be safe; but it was not given to any

one to be for long the darling of the Roman people. Cicero had become so

by using an eloquence to which the Romans were peculiarly susceptible;

but though they loved sweet tongues, long purses went farther with them.

Since Cicero's Consulship he had done nothing to offend the people,

except to remain occasionally out of their sight; but he had lost the

brilliancy of his popularity, and he was aware that it was so.

In discussing popularity in Rome we have to remember of what elements it

was formed. We hear that this or that man was potent at some special

time by the assistance coming to him from the popular voice. There was

in Rome a vast population of idle men, who had been trained by their

city life to look to the fact of their citizenship for their support,

and who did, in truth, live on their citizenship. Of "panem et

circenses" we have all heard, and know that eleemosynary bread and the

public amusements of the day supplied the material and æsthetic wants of

many Romans. But men so fed and so amused were sure to need further

occupations. They became attached to certain friends, to certain

patrons, and to certain parties, and soon learned that a return was

expected for the food and for the excitement supplied to them. This they

gave by holding themselves in readiness for whatever violence was needed

from them, till it became notorious in Rome that a great party man might

best attain his political object by fighting for it in the streets. This

was the meaning of that saying of Crassus, that a man could not be

considered rich till he could keep an army in his own pay. A popular

vote obtained and declared by a faction fight in the forum was still a

popular vote, and if supported by sufficient violence would be valid.

There had been street fighting of the kind when Cicero had defended

Caius Cornelius, in the year after his Prætorship; there had been

fighting of the kind when Rabirius had been condemned in his Consulship.

We shall learn by-and-by to what extent such fighting prevailed when

Clodius was killed by Milo's body-guard. At the period of which we are

now writing, when Clodius was intent on pursuing Cicero to his ruin, it

was a question with Cicero himself whether he would not trust to a

certain faction in Rome to fight for him, and so to protect him. Though

his popularity was on the wane--that general popularity which, we may

presume, had been produced by the tone of his voice and the grace of his

language--there still remained to him that other popularity which

consisted, in truth, of the trained bands employed by the "boni" and the

"optimates," and which might be used, if need were, in opposition to

trained bands on the other side.

The bill first proposed by Clodius to the people with the object of

destroying Cicero did not mention Cicero, nor, in truth, refer to him.

It purported to enact that he who had caused to be executed any Roman

citizen not duly condemned to death, should himself be deprived of the

privilege of water or fire.[275] This condemned no suggested malefactor

to death; but, in accordance with Roman law, made it impossible that any

Roman so condemned should live within whatever bounds might be named for

this withholding of fire and water. The penalty intended was banishment;

but by this enactment no individual would be banished. Cicero, however,

at once took the suggestion to himself, and put himself into mourning,

as a man accused and about to be brought to his trial. He went about the

streets accompanied by crowds armed for his protection; and Clodius also

caused himself to be so accompanied. There came thus to be a question

which might prevail should there be a general fight. The Senate was, as

a body, on Cicero's side, but was quite unable to cope with the

Triumvirate. Cæsar no doubt had resolved that Cicero should be made to

go, and Cæsar was lord of the Triumvirate. On behalf of Cicero there was

a large body of the conservative or oligarchical party who were still

true to him; and they, too, all went into the usual public mourning,

evincing their desire that the accused man should be rescued from his

accusers.

The bitterness of Clodius would be surprising did we not know how bitter

had been Cicero's tongue. When the affair of the Bona Dea had taken

place there was no special enmity between this debauched young man and

the great Consul. Cicero, though his own life had ever been clean and

well ordered, rather affected the company of fast young men when he

found them to be witty as well as clever. This very Clodius had been in

his good books till the affair of the Bona Dea. But now the Tribune's

hatred was internecine. I have hitherto said nothing, and need say but

little, of a certain disreputable lady named Clodia. She was the sister

of Clodius and the wife of Metellus Celer. She was accused by public

voice in Rome of living in incest with her brother, and of poisoning her

husband. Cicero calls her afterward, in his defence of Cælius, "amica

omnium." She had the nickname of Quadrantaria[276] given to her, because

she frequented the public baths, at which the charge was a farthing. It

must be said also of her, either in praise or in dispraise, that she was

the Lesbia who inspired the muse of Catullus. It was rumored in Rome

that she had endeavored to set her cap at Cicero. Cicero in his raillery

had not spared the lady. To speak publicly the grossest evil of women

was not opposed to any idea of gallantry current among the Romans. Our

sense of chivalry, as well as decency, is disgusted by the language used

by Horace to women who once to him were young and pretty, but have

become old and ugly. The venom of Cicero's abuse of Clodia annoys us,

and we have to remember that the gentle ideas which we have taken in

with our mother's milk had not grown into use with the Romans. It is

necessary that this woman's name should be mentioned, and it may appear

here as she was one of the causes of that hatred which burnt between

Clodius and Cicero, till Clodius was killed in a street row.

It has been presumed that Cicero was badly advised in presuming publicly

that the new law was intended against himself, and in taking upon

himself the outward signs of a man under affliction. "The resolution,"

says Middleton, "of changing his gown was too hasty and inconsiderate,

and helped to precipitate his ruin." He was sensible of his error when

too late, and oft reproaches Atticus that, being a stander-by, and less

heated with the game than himself, he would suffer him to make such

blunders. And he quotes the words written to Atticus: "Here my judgment

first failed me, or, indeed, brought me into trouble. We were blind,

blind I say, in changing our raiment and in appealing to the

populace. * * * I handed myself and all belonging to me over to my enemies,

while you were looking on, while you were holding your peace; yes, you,

who, if your wit in the matter was no better than mine, were impeded by

no personal fears."[277] But the reader should study the entire letter,

and study it in the original, for no translator can give its true

purport. This the reader must do before he can understand Cicero's state

of mind when writing it, or his relation to Atticus; or the thoughts

which distracted him when, in accordance with the advice of Atticus, he

resolved, while yet uncondemned, to retire into banishment. The censure

to which Atticus is subjected throughout this letter is that which a

thoughtful, hesitating, scrupulous man is so often disposed to address

to himself. After reminding Atticus of the sort of advice which should

have been given--the want of which in the first moment of his exile he

regrets--and doing this in words of which it is very difficult now to

catch the exact flavor, he begs to be pardoned for his reproaches. "You

will forgive me this," he says. "I blame myself more than I do you; but

I look to you as a second self, and I make you a sharer with me of my

own folly." I take this letter out of its course, and speak of it as

connected with that terrible period of doubt to which it refers, in

which he had to decide whether he would remain in Rome and fight it out,

or run before his enemies. But in writing the letter afterward his mind

was as much disturbed as when he did fly. I am inclined, therefore, to

think that Middleton and others may have been wrong in blaming his

flight, which they have done, because in his subsequent vacillating

moods he blamed himself. How the battle might have gone had he remained,

we have no evidence to show; but we do know that though he fled, he

returned soon with renewed glory, and altogether overcame the attempt

which had been made to destroy him.

In this time of his distress a strong effort was made by the Senate to

rescue him. It was proposed to them that they all as a body should go

into mourning on his behalf; indeed, the Senate passed a vote to this

effect, but were prevented by the two Consuls from carrying it out. As

to what he had best do he and his friends were divided. Some recommended

that he should remain where he was, and defend himself by

street-fighting should it be necessary. In doing this he would

acknowledge that law no longer prevailed in Rome--a condition of things

to which many had given in their adherence, but with which Cicero would

surely have been the last to comply. He himself, in his despair, thought

for a time that the old Roman mode of escape would be preferable, and

that he might with decorum end his life and his troubles by suicide.

Atticus and others dissuaded him from this, and recommended him to fly.

Among these Cato and Hortensius have both been named. To this advice he

at last yielded, and it may be doubted whether any better could have

been given. Lawlessness, which had been rampant in Rome before, had,

under the Triumvirate, become almost lawful. It was Cæsar's intention to

carry out his will with such compliance with the forms of the Republic

as might suit him, but in utter disregard to all such forms when they

did not suit him. The banishment of Cicero was one of the last steps

taken by Cæsar before he left Rome for his campaigns in Gaul. He was

already in command of the legions, and was just without the city. He had

endeavored to buy Cicero, but had failed. Having failed, he had

determined to be rid of him. Clodius was but his tool, as were Pompey

and the two Consuls. Had Cicero endeavored to support himself by

violence in Rome, his contest would, in fact have been with Cæsar.

Cicero, before he went, applied for protection personally to Piso the

Consul, and to Pompey. Gabinius, the other Consul, had already declared

his purpose to the Senate, but Piso was bound to him by family ties. He

himself relates to us in his oration, spoken after his return, against

this Piso, the manner of the meeting between him and Rome's chief

officer. Piso told him--so at least Cicero declared in the Senate, and

we have heard of no contradiction--that Gabinius was so driven by debts

as to be unable to hold up his head without a rich province; that he

himself, Piso, could only hope to get a province by taking part with

Gabinius; that any application to the Consuls was useless, and that

every one must look after himself.[278] Concerning his appeal to Pompey

two stories have been given to us, neither of which appears to be true.

Plutarch says that when Cicero had travelled out from Rome to Pompey's

Alban villa, Pompey ran out of the back-door to avoid meeting him.

Plutarch cared more for a good story than for accuracy, and is not

worthy of much credit as to details unless when corroborated. The other

account is based on Cicero's assertion that he did see Pompey on this

occasion. Nine or ten years after the meeting he refers to it in a

letter to Atticus, which leaves no doubt as to the fact. The story

founded on that letter declares that Cicero threw himself bodily at his

old friend's feet, and that Pompey did not lend a hand to raise him, but

told him simply that everything was in Cæsar's hands. This narrative is,

I think, due to a misinterpretation of Cicero's words, though it is

given by a close translation of them. He is describing Pompey when Cæsar

after his Gallic wars had crossed the Rubicon, and the two late

Triumvirates--the third having perished miserably in the East--were in

arms against each other. "Alter ardet furore et scelere" he says.[279]

Cæsar is pressing on unscrupulous in his passion. "Alter is qui nos sibi

quondam ad pedes stratos ne sublevabat quidem, qui se nihil contra hujus

voluntatem aiebat facere posse." "That other one," he continues--meaning

Pompey, and pursuing his picture of the present contrast--"who in days

gone by would not even lift me when I lay at his feet, and told me that

he could do nothing but as Cæsar wished it." This little supposed detail

of biography has been given, no doubt, from an accurate reading of the

words; but in it the spirit of the writer's mind as he wrote it has

surely been missed. The prostration of which he spoke, from which Pompey

would not raise him, the memory of which was still so bitter to him, was

not a prostration of the body. I hold it to have been impossible that

Cicero should have assumed such an attitude before Pompey, or that he

would so have written to Atticus had he done so. It would have been

neither Roman nor Ciceronian, as displayed by Cicero to Pompey. He had

gone to his old ally and told him of his trouble, and had no doubt

reminded him of those promises of assistance which Pompey had so often

made. Then Pompey had refused to help him, and had assured him, with too

much truth, that Cæsar's will was everything. Again, we have to remember

that in judging of the meaning of words between two such correspondents

as Cicero and Atticus, we must read between the lines, and interpret the

words by creating for ourselves something of the spirit in which they

were written and in which they were received. I cannot imagine that, in

describing to Atticus what had occurred at that interview nine years

after it had taken place, Cicero had intended it to be understood that

he had really grovelled in the dust.

Toward the end of March he started from Rome, intending to take refuge

among his friends in Sicily. On the same day Clodius brought in a bill

directed against Cicero by name and caused it to be carried by the

people, "Ut Marco Tullio aqua et igni interdictum sit"--that it should

be illegal to supply Cicero with fire and water. The law when passed

forbade any one to harbor the criminal within four hundred miles of

Rome, and declared the doing so to be a capital offence. It is evident,

from the action of those who obeyed the law, and of those who did not,

that legal results were not feared so much as the ill-will of those who

had driven Cicero to his exile. They who refused him succor did do so

not because to give it him would be illegal, but lest Cæsar and Pompey

would be offended. It did not last long, and during the short period of

his exile he found perhaps more of friendship than of enmity; but he

directed his steps in accordance with the bearing of party-spirit. We

are told that he was afraid to go to Athens, because at Athens lived

that Autronius whom he had refused to defend. Autronius had been

convicted of conspiracy and banished, and, having been a Catilinarian

conspirator, had been in truth on Cæsar's side. Nor were geographical

facts sufficiently established to tell Cicero what places were and what

were not without the forbidden circle. He sojourned first at Vibo, in

the extreme south of Italy, intending to pass from thence into Sicily.

It was there that he learned that a certain distance had been

prescribed; but it seems that he had already heard that the Proconsular

Governor of the island would not receive him, fearing Cæsar. Then he

came north from Vibo to Brundisium, that being the port by which

travellers generally went from Italy to the East. He had determined to

leave his family in Rome, feeling, probably, that it would be easier for

him to find a temporary home for himself than for him and them together.

And there were money difficulties in which Atticus helped him.[280]

Atticus, always wealthy, had now become a very rich man by the death of

an uncle. We do not know of what nature were the money arrangements made

by Cicero at the time, but there can be no doubt that the losses by his

exile were very great. There was a thorough disruption of his property,

for which the subsequent generosity of his country was unable altogether

to atone. But this sat lightly on Cicero's heart. Pecuniary losses never

weighed heavily with him.

As he journeyed back from Vibo to Brundisium friends were very kind to

him, in spite of the law. Toward the end of the speech which he made

five years afterward on behalf of his friend C. Plancius he explains the

debt of gratitude which he owed to his client, whose kindness to him in

his exile had been very great. He commences his story of the goodness of

Plancius by describing the generosity of the towns on the road to

Brundisium, and the hospitality of his friend Flavius, who had received

him at his house in the neighborhood of that town, and had placed him

safely on board a ship when at last he resolved to cross over to

Dyrrachium. There were many schemes running in his head at this time. At

one period he had resolved to pass through Macedonia into Asia, and to

remain for a while at Cyzicum. This idea he expresses in a letter to his

wife written from Brundisium. Then he goes, wailing no doubt, but in

words which to me seem very natural as coming from a husband in such a

condition: "O me perditum, O me afflictum;"[281] exclamations which it

is impossible to translate, as they refer to his wife's separation from

himself rather than to his own personal sufferings. "How am I to ask you

to come to me?" he says; "you a woman, ill in health, worn out in body

and in spirit. I cannot ask you! Must I then live without you? It must

be so, I think. If there be any hope of my return, it is you must look

to it, you that must strengthen it; but if, as I fear, the thing is

done, then come to me. If I can have you I shall not be altogether

destroyed." No doubt these are wailings; but is a man unmanly because he

so wails to the wife of his bosom? Other humans have written prettily

about women: it was common for Romans to do so. Catullus desires from

Lesbia as many kisses as are the stars of night or the sands of Libya.

Horace swears that he would perish for Chloe if Chloe might be left

alive. "When I am dying," says Tibullus to Delia, "may I be gazing at

you; may my last grasp hold your hand." Propertius tells Cynthia that

she stands to him in lieu of home and parents, and all the joys of life.

"Whether he be sad with his friends or happy, Cynthia does it all." The

language in each case is perfect; but what other Roman was there of whom

we have evidence that he spoke to his wife like this? Ovid in his

letters from his banishment says much of his love for his wife; but

there is no passion expressed in anything that Ovid wrote.

Clodius, as soon as the enactment against Cicero became law, caused it

be carried into effect with all its possible cruelties. The criminal's

property was confiscated. The house on the Palatine Hill was destroyed,

and the goods were put up to auction, with, as we are told, a great lack

of buyers. His choicest treasures were carried away by the Consuls

themselves. Piso, who had lived near him in Rome, got for himself and

for his father-in-law the rich booty from the town house. The country

villas were also destroyed, and Gabinius, who had a country house close

by Cicero's Tusculan retreat, took even the very shrubs out of the

garden. He tells the story of the greed and enmity of the Consuls in the

speech he made after his return, Pro Domo Sua,[282] pleading for the

restitution of his household property. "My house on the Palatine was

burnt," he says, "not by any accident, but by arson. In the mean time

the Consuls were feasting, and were congratulating themselves among the

conspirators, when one boasted that he had been Catiline's friend, the

other that Cethegus had been his cousin." By this he implies that the

conspiracy which during his Consulship had been so odious to Rome was

now, in these days of the Triumvirate, again in favor among Roman

aristocrats.

He went across from Brundisium to Dyrrachium, and from thence to

Thessalonica, where he was treated with most loving-kindness by

Plancius, who was Quæstor in these parts, and who came down to

Dyrrachium to meet him, clad in mourning for the occasion. This was the

Plancius whom he afterward defended, and indeed he was bound to do so.

Plancius seems to have had but little dread of the law, though he was a

Roman officer employed in the very province to the government of which

the present Consul Piso had already been appointed. Thessalonica was

within four hundred miles, and yet Cicero lived there with Plancius for

some months.

The letters from Cicero during his exile are to me very touching, though

I have been told so often that in having written them he lacked the

fortitude of a Roman. Perhaps I am more capable of appreciating natural

humanity than Roman fortitude. We remember the story of the Spartan boy

who allowed the fox to bite him beneath his frock without crying. I

think we may imagine that he refrained from tears in public, before some

herd of school-fellows, or a bench of masters, or amid the sternness of

parental authority; but that he told his sister afterward how he had

been tortured, or his mother as he lay against her bosom, or perhaps his

chosen chum. Such reticences are made dignified by the occasion, when

something has to be won by controlling the expression to which nature

uncontrolled would give utterance, but are not in themselves evidence

either of sagacity or of courage. Roman fortitude was but a suit of

armor to be worn on state occasions. If we come across a warrior with

his crested helmet and his sword and his spear, we see, no doubt, an

impressive object. If we could find him in his night-shirt, the same man

would be there, but those who do not look deeply into things would be

apt to despise him because his grand trappings were absent. Chance has

given us Cicero in his night-shirt. The linen is of such fine texture

that we are delighted with it, but we despise the man because he wore a

garment--such as we wear ourselves indeed, though when we wear it nobody

is then brought in to look at us.

There is one most touching letter written from Thessalonica to his

brother, by whom, after thoughts vacillating this way and that, he was

unwilling to be visited, thinking that a meeting would bring more of

pain than of service. "Mi frater, mi frater, mi frater!" he begins. The

words in English would hardly give all the pathos. "Did you think that I

did not write because I am angry, or that I did not wish to see you? I

angry with you! But I could not endure to be seen by you. You would not

have seen your brother; not him whom you had left; not him whom you had

known; not him whom, weeping as you went away, you had dismissed,

weeping himself as he strove to follow you."[283] Then he heaps blame on

his own head, bitterly accusing himself because he had brought his

brother to such a pass of sorrow. In this letter he throws great blame

upon Hortensius, whom together with Pompey he accuses of betraying him.

What truth there may have been in this accusation as to Hortensius we

have no means of saying. He couples Pompey in the same charge, and as to

Pompey's treatment of him there can be no doubt. Pompey had been untrue

to his promises because of his bond with Cæsar. It is probable that

Hortensius had failed to put himself forward on Cicero's behalf with

that alacrity which the one advocate had expected from the other. Cicero

and Hortensius were friends afterward, but so were Cicero and Pompey.

Cicero was forgiving by nature, and also by self-training. It did not

suit his purposes to retain his enmities. Had there been a possibility

of reconciling Antony to the cause of the "optimates" after the

Philippics, he would have availed himself of it.

Cicero at one time intended to go to Buthrotum in Epirus, where Atticus

possessed a house and property; but he changed his purpose. He remained

at Thessalonica till November, and then returned to Dyrrachium, having

all through his exile been kept alive by tidings of steps taken for his

recall. There seems very soon to have grown up a feeling in Rome that

the city had disgraced itself by banishing such a man; and Cæsar had

gone to his provinces. We can well imagine that when he had once left

Rome, with all his purposes achieved, having so far quieted the tongue

of the strong speaker who might have disturbed them, he would take no

further steps to perpetuate the orator's banishment. Then Pompey and

Clodius soon quarrelled. Pompey, without Cæsar to direct him, found the

arrogance of the Patrician Tribune insupportable. We hear of wheels

within wheels, and stories within stories, in the drama of Roman history

as it was played at this time. Together with Cicero, it had been

necessary to Cæsar's projects that Cato also should be got out of Rome;

and this had been managed by means of Clodius, who had a bill passed for

the honorable employment of Cato on state purposes in Cyprus. Cato had

found himself obliged to go. It was as though our Prime-minister had got

parliamentary authority for sending a noisy member of the Opposition to

Asiatic Turkey for six months There was an attempt, or an alleged

attempt, of Clodius to have Pompey murdered; and there was

street-fighting, so that Pompey was besieged, or pretended to be

besieged, in his own house. "We might as well seek to set a charivari to

music as to write the history of this political witches' revel," says

Mommsen, speaking of the state of Rome when Cæsar was gone, Cicero

banished, and Pompey supposed to be in the ascendant.[284] There was, at

any rate, quarrelling between Clodius and Pompey, in the course of which

Pompey was induced to consent to Cicero's return. Then Clodius took upon

himself, in revenge, to turn against the Triumvirate altogether, and to

repudiate even Cæsar himself. But it was all a vain hurly-burly, as to

which Cæsar, when he heard the details in Gaul, could only have felt how

little was to be gained by maintaining his alliance with Pompey. He had

achieved his purpose, which he could not have done without the

assistance of Crassus, whose wealth, and of Pompey, whose authority,

stood highest in Rome; and now, having had his legions voted to him, and

his provinces, and his prolonged term of years, he cared nothing for

either of them.

There is a little story which must be repeated, as against Cicero, in

reference to this period of his exile, because it has been told in all

records of his life. Were I to omit the little story, it would seem as

though I shunned the records which have been repeated as opposed to his

credit. He had written, some time back, a squib in which he had been

severe upon the elder Curio; so it is supposed; but it matters little

who was the object or what the subject. This had got wind in Rome, as

such matters do sometimes, and he now feared that it would do him a

mischief with the Curios and the friends of the Curios. The authorship

was only matter of gossip. Could it not be denied? "As it is written,"

says Cicero, "in a style inferior to that which is usual to me, can it

not be shown not to have been mine?"[285] Had Cicero possessed all the

Christian virtues, as we hope that prelates and pastors possess them in

this happy land, he would not have been betrayed into, at any rate, the

expression of such a wish. As it is, the enemies of Cicero must make the

most of it. His friends, I think, will look upon it leniently.

Continued efforts were made among Cicero's friends at Rome to bring him

back, with which he was not altogether contented. He argues the matter

repeatedly with Atticus, not always in the best temper. His friends at

Rome were, he thought, doing the matter amiss: they would fail, and he

would still have to finish his days abroad. Atticus, in his way to

Epirus, visits him at Dyrrachium, and he is sure that Atticus would not

have left Rome but that the affair was hopeless. The reader of the

correspondence is certainly led to the belief that Atticus must have

been the most patient of friends; but he feels, at the same time, that

Atticus would not have been patient had not Cicero been affectionate and

true. The Consuls for the new year were Lentulus and Metellus Nepos. The

former was Cicero's declared friend, and the other had already abandoned

his enmity. Clodius was no longer Tribune, and Pompey had been brought

to yield. The Senate were all but unanimous. But there was still life in

Clodius and his party; and day dragged itself after day, and month after

month, while Cicero still lingered at Dyrrachium, waiting till a bill

should have been passed by the people. Pompey, who was never

whole-hearted in anything, had declared that a bill voted by the people

would be necessary. The bill at last was voted, on the 14th of August,

and Cicero, who knew well what was being done at Rome, passed over from

Dyrrachium to Brundisium on the same day, having been a year and four

months absent from Rome. During the year B.C. 57, up to the time of his

return, he wrote but three letters that have come to us--two very short

notes to Atticus, in the first of which he declares that he will come

over on the authority of a decree of the Senate, without waiting for a

law. In the second he falls again into despair, declaring that

everything is over. In the third he asks Metellus for his aid, telling

the Consul that unless it be given soon the man for whom it is asked

will no longer be living to receive it. Metellus did give the aid very

cordially.

It has been remarked that Cicero did nothing for literature during his

banishment, either by writing essays or preparing speeches; and it has

been implied that the prostration of mind arising from his misfortunes

must have been indeed complete, when a man whose general life was made

marvellous by its fecundity had been repressed into silence. It should,

however, be borne in mind that there could be no inducement for the

writing of speeches when there was no opportunity of delivering them. As

to his essays, including what we call his Philosophy and his Rhetoric,

they who are familiar with his works will remember how apt he was, in

all that he produced, to refer to the writings of others. He translates

and he quotes, and he makes constant use of the arguments and

illustrations of those who have gone before him. He was a man who rarely

worked without the use of a library. When I think how impossible it

would be for me to repeat this oft-told tale of Cicero's life without a

crowd of books within reach of my hand, I can easily understand why

Cicero was silent at Thessalonica and Dyrrachium. It has been remarked

also by a modern critic that we find "in the letters from exile a

carelessness and inaccuracy of expression which contrasts strongly with

the style of his happier days." I will not for a moment put my judgment

in such a matter in opposition to that of Mr. Tyrrell--but I should

myself have been inclined rather to say that the style of Cicero's

letters varies constantly, being very different when used to Atticus, or

to his brother, or to lighter friends such as Poetus and Trebatius; and

very different again when business of state was in hand, as are his

letters to Decimus Brutus, Cassius Brutus, and Plancus. To be correct in

familiar letters is not to charm. A studied negligence is needed to make

such work live to posterity--a grace of loose expression which may

indeed have been made easy by use, but which is far from easy to the

idle and unpractised writer. His sorrow, perhaps, required a style of

its own. I have not felt my own untutored perception of the language to

be offended by unfitting slovenliness in the expression of his grief.

APPENDICES TO VOLUME I.

APPENDIX A.

(_See_ ch. II., note [39])

_THE BATTLE OF THE EAGLE AND THE SERPENT._

Homer, Iliad, lib. xii, 200:

[Greek:

Hoi rh' eti mermêrizon ephestaotes para taphrôi.

Ornis gar sphin epêlthe perêsemenai memaôsin,

Aietos upsipetês ep' aristera laon eergôn,

Phoinêenta drakonta pherôn onuchessi pelôron,

Zôon et' aspaironta; kai oupô lêtheto charmês.

Kopse gar auton echonta kata stêthos para deirên,

Idnôtheis opisô; ho d' apo ethen êke chamaze,

Algêsas odunêisi, mesoi d' eni kabbal' homilôi;

Autos de klanxas peteto pnoêis anemoio.]

Pope's translation of the passage, book xii, 231:

"A signal omen stopp'd the passing host,

The martial fury in their wonder lost.

Jove's bird on sounding pinions beat the skies;

A bleeding serpent, of enormous size,

His talons trussed; alive, and curling round,

He stung the bird, whose throat received the wound.

Mad with the smart, he drops the fatal prey,

In airy circles wings his painful way,

Floats on the winds, and rends the heav'ns with cries.

Amid the host the fallen serpent lies.

They, pale with terror, mark its spires unroll'd,

And Jove's portent with beating hearts behold."

Lord Derby's Iliad, book xii, 236:

"For this I read the future, if indeed

To us, about to cross, this sign from Heaven

Was sent, to leftward of the astonished crowd:

A soaring eagle, bearing in his claws

A dragon huge of size, of blood-red hue,

Alive; yet dropped him ere he reached his home,

Nor to his nestlings bore the intended prey."

Cicero's telling of the story:

"Hic Jovis altisoni subito pinnata satelles,

Arboris e trunco serpentis saucia morsu,

Ipsa feris subigit transfigens unguibus anguem

Semianimum, et varia graviter cervice micantem.

Quem se intorquentem lanians, rostroque cruentans,

Jam satiata animum, jam duros ulta dolores,

Abjicit efflantem, et laceratum affligit in unda;

Seque obitu a solis nitidos convertit ad ortus."

Voltaire's translation:

"Tel on voit cet oiseau qui porte le tonnerre,

Blessé par un serpent élancé de la terre;

Il s'envole, il entraîne au séjour azuré

L'ennemi tortueux dont il est entouré.

Le sang tombe des airs. Il déchire, il dévore

Le reptile acharné qui le combat encore;

Il le perce, il le tient sous ses ongles vainqueurs;

Par cent coups redoublés il venge ses douleurs.

Le monstre, en expirant, se débat, se replie;

Il exhale en poisons les restes de sa vie;

Et l'aigle, tout sanglant, fier et victorieux,

Le rejette en fureur, et plane au haut des cieux."

Virgil's version, Æneid, lib. xi., 751:

"Utque volans alte raptum quum fulva draconem

Fert aquila, implicuitque pedes, atque unguibus hæsit

Saucius at serpens sinuosa volumina versat,

Arrectisque horret squamis, et sibilat ore,

Arduus insurgens. Illa haud minus urget obunco

Luctantem rostro; simul æthera verberat alis."

Dryden's translation from Virgil's Æneid, book xi.:

"So stoops the yellow eagle from on high,

And bears a speckled serpent through the sky;

Fastening his crooked talons on the prey,

The prisoner hisses through the liquid way;

Resists the royal hawk, and though opprest,

She fights in volumes, and erects her crest.

Turn'd to her foe, she stiffens every scale,

And shoots her forky tongue, and whisks her threatening tail.

Against the victor all defence is weak.

Th' imperial bird still plies her with his beak:

He tears her bowels, and her breast he gores,

Then claps his pinions, and securely soars."

Pitt's translation, book xi.:

"As when th' imperial eagle soars on high,

And bears some speckled serpent through the sky,

While her sharp talons gripe the bleeding prey,

In many a fold her curling volumes play,

Her starting brazen scales with horror rise,

The sanguine flames flash dreadful from her eyes

She writhes, and hisses at her foe, in vain,

Who wins at ease the wide ærial plain,

With her strong hooky beak the captive plies,

And bears the struggling prey triumphant through the skies."

Shelley's version of the battle, The Revolt of Islam, canto i.:

"For in the air do I behold indeed

An eagle and a serpent wreathed in fight,

And now relaxing its impetuous flight,

Before the ærial rock on which I stood

The eagle, hovering, wheeled to left and right,

And hung with lingering wings over the flood,

And startled with its yells the wide air's solitude

"A shaft of light upon its wings descended,

And every golden feather gleamed therein--

Feather and scale inextricably blended

The serpent's mailed and many-colored skin

Shone through the plumes, its coils were twined within

By many a swollen and knotted fold, and high

And far, the neck receding lithe and thin,

Sustained a crested head, which warily

Shifted and glanced before the eagle's steadfast eye.

"Around, around, in ceaseless circles wheeling,

With clang of wings and scream, the eagle sailed

Incessantly--sometimes on high concealing

Its lessening orbs, sometimes, as if it failed,

Drooped through the air, and still it shrieked and wailed,

And casting back its eager head, with beak

And talon unremittingly assailed

The wreathed serpent, who did ever seek

Upon his enemy's heart a mortal wound to wreak

"What life, what power was kindled, and arose

Within the sphere of that appalling fray!

For, from the encounter of those wond'rous foes,

A vapor like the sea's suspended spray

Hung gathered; in the void air, far away,

Floated the shattered plumes; bright scales did leap,

Where'er the eagle's talons made their way,

Like sparks into the darkness; as they sweep,

Blood stains the snowy foam of the tumultuous deep.

"Swift chances in that combat--many a check,

And many a change--a dark and wild turmoil;

Sometimes the snake around his enemy's neck

Locked in stiff rings his adamantine coil,

Until the eagle, faint with pain and toil,

Remitted his strong flight, and near the sea

Languidly fluttered, hopeless so to foil

His adversary, who then reared on high

His red and burning crest, radiant with victory.

"Then on the white edge of the bursting surge,

Where they had sunk together, would the snake

Relax his suffocating grasp, and scourge

The wind with his wild writhings; for, to break

That chain of torment, the vast bird would shake

The strength of his unconquerable wings

As in despair, and with his sinewy neck

Dissolve in sudden shock those linked rings,

Then soar--as swift as smoke from a volcano springs.

"Wile baffled wile, and strength encountered strength,

Thus long, but unprevailing--the event

Of that portentous fight appeared at length.

Until the lamp of day was almost spent

It had endured, when lifeless, stark, and rent,

Hung high that mighty serpent, and at last

Fell to the sea, while o'er the continent,

With clang of wings and scream, the eagle past,

Heavily borne away on the exhausted blast."

I have repudiated the adverse criticism on Cicero's poetry which has

been attributed to Juvenal; but, having done so, am bound in fairness

to state that which is to be found elsewhere in any later author of

renown as a classic. In the treatise De Oratoribus, attributed to

Tacitus, and generally published with his works by him--a treatise

commenced, probably, in the last year of Vespasian's reign, and

completed only in that of Domitian--Cicero as a poet is spoken of

with a severity of censure which the writer presumes to have been his

recognized desert. "For Cæsar," he says, "and Brutus made verses, and

sent them to the public libraries; not better, indeed, than Cicero, but

with less of general misfortune, because only a few people knew that

they had done so." This must be taken for what it is worth. The treatise,

let it have been written by whom it might, is full of wit, and is

charming in language and feeling. It is a dialogue after the manner of

Cicero himself, and is the work of an author well conversant with the

subjects in hand. But it is, no doubt, the case that those two

unfortunate lines which have been quoted became notorious in Rome when

there was a party anxious to put down Cicero.

APPENDIX B.

(_See_ ch. IV., note [84])

FROM THE BRUTUS--CA. XCII., XCIII.

"There were at that time two orators, Cotta and Hortensius, who

towered above all others, and incited me to rival them. The first

spoke with self-restraint and moderation, clearly and easily,

expressing his ideas in appropriate language. The other was

magnificent and fierce; not such as you remember him, Brutus, when he

was already failing, but full of life both in his words and actions. I

then resolved that Hortensius should, of the two, be my model, because

I felt myself like to him in his energy, and nearer to him in his age.

I observed that when they were in the same causes, those for Canuleius

and for our consular Dolabella, though Cotta was the senior counsel,

Hortensius took the lead. A large gathering of men and the noise of

the Forum require that a speaker shall be quick, on fire, active, and

loud. The year after my return from Asia I undertook the charge of

causes that were honorable, and in that year I was seeking to be

Quæstor, Cotta to be Consul, and Hortensius to be Prætor. Then for a

year I served as Quæstor in Sicily. Cotta, after his Consulship, went

as governor into Gaul, and then Hortensius was, and was considered to

be, first at the bar. When I had been back from Sicily twelve months

I began to find that whatever there was within me had come to such

perfection as it might attain. I feel that I am speaking too much of

myself, but it is done, not that you may be made to own my ability or

my eloquence--which is far from my thoughts--but that you may see how

great was my toil and my industry. Then, when I had been employed for

nearly five years in many cases, and was accounted a leading advocate,

I specially concerned myself in conducting the great cause on behalf

of Sicily--the trial of Verres--when I and Hortensius were Ædile and

Consul designate.

"But as this discussion of ours is intended to produce not a mere

catalogue of orators, but some true lessons of oratory, let us see

what there was in Hortensius that we must blame. When he was out of

his Consulship, seeing that among past Consuls there was no one on a

par with him, and thinking but little of those who were below consular

rank, he became idle in his work to which from boyhood he had devoted

himself, and chose to live in the midst of his wealth, as he thought

a happier life--certainly an easier one. The first two or three years

took off something from him. As the gradual decay of a picture will

be observed by the true critic, though it be not seen by the world at

large, so was it with his decay. From day to day he became more and

more unlike his old self, failing in all branches of oratory, but

specially in the rapidity and continuity of his words. But for myself

I never rested, struggling always to increase whatever power there was

in me by practice of every kind, especially in writing. Passing over

many things in the year after I was Ædile, I will come to that in

which I was elected first Prætor, to the great delight of the public

generally; for I had gained the good-will of men, partly by my

attention to the causes which I undertook, but specially by a certain

new strain of eloquence, as excellent as it was uncommon, with which

I spoke." Cicero, when he wrote this of himself, was an old man

sixty-two years of age, broken hearted for the loss of his daughter,

to whom it was no doubt allowed among his friends to praise himself

with the garrulity of years, because it was understood that he had

been unequalled in the matter of which he was speaking. It is easy for

us to laugh at his boastings; but the account which he gives of his

early life, and of the manner in which he attained the excellence for

which he had been celebrated, is of value.

APPENDIX C.

(_See_ ch. VI., note [117])

There was still prevailing in Rome at this time a strong feeling that

a growing taste for these ornamental luxuries was injurious to the

Republic, undermining its simplicity and weakening its stability. We

are well aware that its simplicity was a thing of the past, and its

stability gone The existence of a Verres is proof that it was so; but

still the feeling remained--and did remain long after the time of

Cicero--that these beautiful things were a sign of decay. We know

how conquering Rome caught the taste for them from conquered Greece.

"Græcia capta ferum victorem cepit, et artes intulit agresti Latio."

[286] Cicero submitted himself to this new captivity readily, but with

apologies, as shown in his pretended abnegation of all knowledge

of art. Two years afterward, in a letter to Atticus, giving him

instructions as to the purchase of statues, he declares that he is

altogether carried away by his longing for such things, but not

without a feeling of shame. "Nam in eo genere sic studio efferimur ut

abs te adjuvandi, ab aliis propre reprehendi simus"[287]--"Though you

will help me, others I know will blame me." The same feeling is

expressed beautifully, but no doubt falsely, by Horace when he

declares, as Cicero had done, his own indifference to such delicacies:

"Gems, marbles, ivory, Tuscan statuettes,

Pictures, gold plate, Gætulian coverlets,

There are who have not. One there is, I trow,

Who cares not greatly if he has or no."[288]

Many years afterward, in the time of Tiberius, Velleius Paterculus says

the same when he is telling how ignorant Mummius was of sculpture, who,

when he had taken Corinth, threatened those who had to carry away the

statues from their places, that if they broke any they should be made to

replace them. "You will not doubt, however," the historian says, "that

it would have been better for the Republic to remain ignorant of these

Corinthian gems than to understand them as well as it does now. That

rudeness befitted the public honor better than our present taste."[289]

Cicero understood well enough, with one side of his intelligence, that

as the longing for these things grew in the minds of rich men, as the

leading Romans of the day became devoted to luxury rather than to work,

the ground on which the Republic stood must be sapped. A Marcellus or a

Scipio had taken glory in ornamenting the city. A Verres or even an

Hortensius--even a Cicero--was desirous of beautiful things for his own

house. But still, with the other side of his intelligence, he saw that a

perfect citizen might appreciate art, and yet do his duty, might

appreciate art, and yet save his country. What he did not see was, that

the temptations of luxury, though compatible with virtue, are

antagonistic to it. The camel may be made to go through the eye of the

needle--but it is difficult.

APPENDIX D.

(_See_ ch. VII., note [144])

PRO LEGE MANILIA--CA. X., XVI.

"Utinam, Quirites, virorum fortium, atque innocentium copiam tantam

haberetis, ut hæc vobis deliberatio difficilis esset, quemnam

potissimum tantis rebus ac tanto bello præficiendum putaretis! Nunc

vero cum sit unus Cn. Pompeius, qui non modo eorum hominum, qui nunc

sunt, gloriam, sed etiam antiquitatis memoriam virtute superarit; quæ

res est, quæ cujusquam animum in hac causa dubium facere posset?

Ego enim sic existimo, in summo imperatore quatuor has res inesse

oportere, scientiam rei militaris, virtutem, auctoritatem,

felicitatem. Quis igitur hoc homine scientior umquam aut fuit, aut

esse debuit? qui e ludo, atque pueritiæ disciplina, bello maximo

atque acerrimis hostibus, ad patris exercitum atque in militiæ

disciplinam profectus est? qui extrema pueritia miles fuit summi

imperatoris? ineunte adolescentia maximi ipse exercitus imperator? qui

sæpius cum hoste conflixit, quam quisquam cum inimico concertavit?

plura bella gessit, quam cæteri legerunt? plures provincias confecit,

quam alii concupiverunt? cujus adolescentia ad scientiam rei militaris

non alienis præceptis, sed suis imperiis; non offensionibus belli,

sed victoriis; non stipendiis, sed triumphis est erudita? Quod

denique genus belli esse potest, in quo illum non exercuerit fortuna

reipublicæ? Civile; Africanum; Transalpinum; Hispaniense; mistum

ex civitatibus atque ex bellicosissimis nationibus servile; navale

bellum, varia et diversa genera, et bellorum et hostium, non solum

gesta ab hoc uno, sed etiam confecta, nullam rem esse declarant, in

usu militari positam, quæ hojus viri scientiam fugere posset.

* * * * *

"Quare cum et bellum ita necessarium sit, ut negligi non possit; ita

magnum, ut accuratissime sit administrandum; et cum ei imperatorem

præficere possitis, in quo sit eximia belli scientia, singularis

virtus, clarissima auctoritas, egregia fortuna; dubitabitis, Quirites,

quin hoc tantum boni, quod vobis a diis immortalibus oblatum et datum

est, in rempublicam conservandam atque amplificandam conferatis?"

* * * * *

"I could wish, Quirites, that there was open to you so large a choice

of men capable at the same time, and honest, that you might find a

difficulty in deciding who might best be selected for command in a

war so momentous as this. But now when Pompey alone has surpassed in

achievements not only those who live, but all of whom we have read in

history, what is there to make any one hesitate in the matter? In my

opinion there are four qualities to be desired in a general--military

knowledge, valor, authority, and fortune. But whoever was or was ever

wanted to be more skilled than this man, who, taken fresh from school

and from the lessons of his boyhood, was subjected to the discipline

of his father's army during one of our severest wars, when our enemies

were strong against us? In his earliest youth he served under our

greatest general. As years went on he was himself in command over

a large army. He has been more frequent in fighting than others in

quarrelling. Few have read of so many battles as he has fought.

He has conquered more provinces than others have desired to pillage. He

learned the art of war not from written precepts, but by his own

practice; not from reverses, but from victories. He does not count his

campaigns, but the triumphs which he has won. What nature of warfare is

there in which the Republic has not used his services? Think of our

Civil war[290]--of our African war[291]--of our war on the other side of

the Alps[292]--of our Spanish wars[293]--of our Servile war[294]--which

was carried on by the energies of so many mighty people--and this

Maritime war.[295] How many enemies had we, how various were our

contests! They were all not only carried through by this one man, but

brought to an end so gloriously as to show that there is nothing in the

practice of warfare which has escaped his knowledge.

* * * * *

"Seeing, therefore, that this war cannot be neglected; that its

importance demands the utmost care in its administration; that it

requires a general in whom should be found sure military science,

manifest valor, conspicuous authority, and pre-eminent good

fortune--do you doubt, Quirites, but that you should use the great

blessing which the gods have given you for the preservation and glory

of the Republic?"

* * * * *

On reading, however, the piece over again, I almost doubt whether

there be any passages in it which should be selected as superior to

others.

APPENDIX E.

(_See_ ch. XI., note [235])

_LUCAN, LIBER I._

"O male concordes, nimiaque cupidine cæci,

Quid miscere juvat vires orbemque tenere

In medio."

"Temporis angusti mansit concordia discors,

Paxque fuit non sponte ducum. Nam sola futuri

Crassus erat belli medius mora. Qualiter undas

Qui secat, et geminum gracilis mare separat isthmos,

Nec patitur conferre fretum; si terra recedat,

Ionium Ægæo frangat mare. Sic, ubi sæva

Arma ducum dirimens, miserando funere Crassus

Assyrias latio maculavit sanguine Carras."

"Dividitur ferro regnum; populique potentis,

Quæ mare, quæ terras, quæ totum possidet orbem,

Non cepit fortuna duos."

"Tu nova ne veteres obscurent acta triumphos,

Et victis cedat piratica laurea Gallis,

Magne, times; te jam series, ususque laborum

Erigit, impatiensque loci fortuna secundi.

Nec quemquam jam ferre potest Cæsarve priorem,

Pompeiusve parem. Quis justius induit arma,

Scire nefas; magno se judice quisque tuetur,

Victrix causa deis placuit sed victa, Catoni.[296]

Nec coiere pares; alter vergentibus annis

In senium, longoque togæ tranquillior usu

Dedidicit jam pace ducem; famæque petitor

Multa dare in vulgas; totus popularibus auris

Impelli, plausuque sui gaudere theatri;

Nec reparare novas vires, multumque priori

Credere fortunæ. Stat magni nominis umbra."

"Sed non in Cæsare tantum

Nomen erat, nec fama ducis; sed nescia virtus

Stare loco; solusque pudor non vincere bello.

Acer et indomitus; quo spes, quoque ira vocasset,

Ferre manum, et nunquam te merando parcere ferro;

Successus urgere suos; instare favori

Numinis."--Lucan, lib. i.

* * * * *

"O men so ill-fitted to agree, O men blind with greed, of what service

can it be that you should join your powers, and possess the world

between you?"

"For a short time the ill-sorted compact lasted, and there was a peace

which each of them abhorred. Crassus alone stood between the others,

hindering for a while the coming war--as an isthmus separates two

waters and forbids sea to meet sea. If the morsel of land gives way,

the Ionian waves and the Ægean dash themselves in foam against each

other. So was it with the arms of the two chiefs when Crassus fell,

and drenched the Assyrian Carræ with Roman blood."

"Then the possession of the Empire was put to the arbitration of the

sword. The fortunes of a people which possessed sea and earth and the

whole world, were not sufficient for two men."

"You, Magnus, you, Pompeius, fear lest newer deeds than yours should

make dull your old triumphs, and the scattering of the pirates should

be as nothing to the conquering of Gaul. The practice of many wars has

so exalted you, O Cæsar, that you cannot put up with a second place.

Cæsar will endure no superior; but Pompey will have no equal. Whose

cause was the better the poet dares not inquire! Each will have his

own advocate in history. On the side of the conqueror the gods ranged

themselves. Cato has chosen to follow the conquered.

"But surely the men were not equal. The one in declining years, who

had already changed his arms for the garb of peace, had unlearned the

general in the statesman--had become wont to talk to the people,

to devote himself to harangues, and to love the applause of his own

theatre. He has not cared to renew his strength, trusting to his old

fortune. There remains of him but the shadow of his great name."