_CICERO, AETAT._ 52, 53, 54.
[Sidenote: B.C. 55, aetat. 52.]
I can best continue my record of Cicero's life for this and the two
subsequent years by following his speeches and his letters. It was at
this period the main object of his political life to reconcile the
existence of a Caesar with that of a Republic--two poles which could not
by any means be brought together. Outside of his political life he
carried on his profession as an advocate with all his former energy,
with all his former bitterness, with all his old friendly zeal, but
never, I think, with his former utility. His life with his friends and
his family was prosperous; but that ambition to do some great thing for
his country which might make his name more famous than that of other
Romans was gradually fading, and, as it went, was leaving regrets and
remorse behind which would not allow him to be a happy man. But it was
now, when he had reached his fifty-second year, that he in truth began
that career in literature which has made him second to no Roman in
reputation. There are some early rhetorical essays, which were taken
from the Greek, of doubtful authenticity; there are the few lines which
are preserved of his poetry; there are the speeches which he wrote as
well as spoke for the Rome of the day; and there are his letters, which
up to this time had been intended only for his correspondents. All that
we have from his pen up to this time has been preserved for us by the
light of those great works which he now commenced. In this year, B.C.
55, there appeared the dialogue De Oratore, and in the next the treatise
De Republica. It was his failure as a politician which in truth drove
Cicero to the career of literature. As I intend to add to this second
volume a few chapters as to his literary productions, I will only
mention the dates on which these dialogues and treatises were given to
the world as I go on with my work.
In the year B.C. 55, the two of the Triumvirate who had been left in
Rome, Pompey and Crassus, were elected Consuls, and provinces were
decreed to each of them for five years--to Pompey the two Spains, and to
Crassus that Syria which was to be so fatal to him. All this had been
arranged at Lucca, in the north of Italy, whither Caesar was able to come
as being within the bounds of his province, to meet his friends from
Rome--or his enemies. All aristocratic Rome went out in crowds to Lucca,
so that two hundred Senators might be seen together in the streets of
that provincial town. It was nevertheless near enough to Rome to permit
the conqueror from Gaul to look closely into the politics of the city.
By his permission, if not at his instigation, Pompey and Crassus had
been chosen Consuls, and to himself was conceded the government of his
own province for five further years--that is, down to year B.C. 49
inclusive. It must now at least have become evident to Cicero that Caesar
intended to rule the Empire.
Though we already have Cicero's letters arranged for us in a
chronological sequence which may be held to be fairly correct for
biographical purposes, still there is much doubt remaining as to the
exact periods at which many of them were written. Abeken, the German
biographer, says that this year, B.C. 55, produced twelve letters. In
the French edition of Cicero's works published by Panckoucke thirty-five
are allotted to it. Mr. Watson, in his selected letters, has not taken
one from the year in question. Mr. Tyrrell, who has been my Mentor
hitherto in regard to the correspondence, has not, unfortunately,
published the result of his labors beyond the year 53 B.C. at the time
of my present writing. Some of those who have dealt with Cicero's life
and works, and have illustrated them by his letters, have added
something to the existing confusion by assuming an accuracy of knowledge
in this respect which has not existed. We have no right to quarrel with
them for having done so; certainly not with Middleton, as in his time
such accuracy was less valued by readers than it is now; and we have the
advantage of much light which, though still imperfect, is very bright in
comparison with that enjoyed by him. A study of the letters, however, in
the sequence now given to them affords an accurate picture of Cicero's
mind during the years between the period of his return from exile B.C.
57 and Milo's trial B.C. 52, although the reader may occasionally be
misled as to the date of this or the other letter.
With the dates of his speeches, at any rate with the year in which they
were made, we are better acquainted. They are of course much fewer in
number, and are easily traced by the known historical circumstances of
the time. B.C. 55, he made that attack upon his old enemy, the late
Consul Piso, which is perhaps the most egregious piece of abuse extant
in any language. Even of this we do not know the precise date, but we
may be sure that it was spoken early in the year, because Cicero alludes
in it to Pompey's great games which were in preparation, and which were
exhibited when Pompey's new theatre was opened in May.[28] Plutarch
tells us that they did not take place till the beginning of the
following year.[29] Piso on his return from Macedonia attacked Cicero in
the Senate in answer to all the hard things that had already been said
of him, and Cicero, as Middleton says, "made a reply to him on the spot
in an invective speech, the severest, perhaps, that ever was spoken by
any man, on the person, the parts, the whole life and conduct of Piso,
which as long as the Roman name subsists must deliver down a most
detestable character of him to all posterity."
We are here asked to imagine that this attack was delivered on the spur
of the moment in answer to Piso's attack. I cannot believe that it
should have been so, however great may have been the orator's power over
thoughts and words. We have had in our own days wonderful instances of
ready and indignant reply made instantaneously, but none in which the
angry eloquence has risen to such a power as is here displayed. We
cannot but suppose that had human intellect ever been perfect enough for
such an exertion, it would have soared high enough also to have
abstained from it. It may have been that Cicero knew well enough
beforehand what the day was about to produce, so as to have prepared his
reply. It may well have been that he himself undertook the polishing of
his speech before it was given to the public in the words which we now
read. We may, I think, take it for granted that Piso did make an attack
upon him, and that Cicero answered him at once with words which crushed
him, and which are not unfairly represented by those which have come
down to us.
The imaginative reader will lose himself in wonder as he pictures to
himself the figure of the pretentious Proconsul, with his assumption of
confidence, as he was undergoing the castigation which this great master
of obloquy was inflicting upon him, and the figure of the tall, lean
orator, with his long neck and keen eyes, with his arms trained to
assist his voice, managing his purple bordered toga with a perfect
grace, throwing all his heart into his impassioned words as they fell
into the ears of the Senators around him without the loss of a syllable.
This Lucius Calpurnius Piso Caesoronius had come from one of the highest
families in Rome, and had possessed interest enough to be elected
Consul for the year in which Cicero was sent into banishment.[30] He was
closely connected with that Piso Frugi to whom Cicero's daughter had
been married; and Cicero, when he was threatened by the faction of
Clodius--a faction which he did not then believe to be supported by the
Triumvirate--had thought that he was made safe, at any rate, from cruel
results by consular friendship and consular protection. Piso Caesoronius
had failed him altogether, saying, in answer to Cicero's appeal, that
the times were of such a nature that every one must look to himself. The
nature of Cicero's rage may be easily conceived. An attempt to describe
it has already been made. It was not till after his Consulate that he
was ever waked to real anger, and the one object whom he most entirely
hated with his whole soul was Lucius Piso.
By the strength of Cicero's eloquence this man has occupied an
immortality of meanness. We cannot but believe that he must have in some
sort deserved it, or the justice of the world would have vindicated his
character. It should, however, be told of him that three years afterward
he was chosen Censor, together with Appius Claudius. But it must also be
told that, as far as we can judge, both these men were unworthy of the
honor. They were the last two Censors elected in Rome before the days of
the Empire. It is impossible not to believe that Piso was vile, but
impossible also to believe that he was as vile as Cicero represented
him. Caesar was at this time his son-in-law, as he was father to
Calphurnia, with whom Shakspeare has made us familiar. I do not know
that Caesar took in bad part the hard things that were said of his
father-in-law.
The first part of the speech is lost. The first words we know because
they have been quoted by Quintilian, "Oh ye gods immortal, what day is
this which has shone upon me at last?"[31] We may imagine from this
that Cicero intended it to be understood that he exulted in the coming
of his revenge. The following is a fair translation of the opening
passage of what remains to us: "Beast that you are, do you not see, do
you not perceive, how odious to the men around you is that face of
yours?" Then with rapid words he heaps upon the unfortunate man
accusations of personal incompetencies. Nobody complains, says Cicero,
that that fellow of yesterday, Gabinius, should have been made Consul:
we have not been deceived in him. "But your eyes and eyebrows, your
forehead, that face of yours, which should be the dumb index of the mind
within, have deceived those who have not known you. Few of us only have
been aware of your infamous vices, the sloth of your intellect, your
dulness, your inability to speak. When was your voice heard in the
Forum? when has your counsel been put to the proof? when did you do any
service either in peace or war? You have crept into your high place by
the mistakes of men, by the regard to the dirty images of your
ancestors, to whom you have no resemblance except in their present grimy
color. And shall he boast to me," says the orator, turning from Piso to
the audience around, "that he has gone on without a check from one step
in the magistracy to another? That is a boast for me to make, for
me--"homini novo"--a man without ancestors, on whom the Roman people has
showered all its honors. You were made AEdile, you say; the Roman people
choose a Piso for their AEdile--not this man from any regard for himself,
but because he is a Piso. The Praetorship was conferred not on you but on
your ancestors who were known and who were dead! Of you, who are alive
no one has known anything. But me--!" Then he continues the contrast
between himself and Piso; for the speech is as full of his own merits as
of the other man's abominations.
So the oration goes on to the end. He asserts, addressing himself to
Piso, that if he saw him and Gabinius crucified together, he did not
know whether he would be most delighted by the punishment inflicted on
their bodies or by the ruin of their reputation. He declares that he has
prayed for all evil on Piso and Gabinius, and that the gods have heard
him, but it has not been for death, or sickness, or for torment, that he
had prayed, but for such evils as have in truth come upon them. Two
Consuls sent with large armies into two of the grandest provinces have
returned with disgrace. That one--meaning Piso--has not dared even to
send home an account of his doings; and the other--Gabinius--has not had
his words credited by the Senate, nor any of his requests granted! He
Cicero, had hardly dared to hope for all this, but the gods had done it
for him! The most absurd passage is that in which he tells Piso that,
having lost his army--which he had done--he had brought back nothing in
safety but that "old impudent face of his."[32] Altogether it is a
tirade of abuse very inferior to Cicero's dignity. Le Clerc, the French
critic and editor, speaks the truth when he says, "Il faut avouer qu'il
manque surtout de moderation, et que la gravite d'un orateur consulaire
y fait trop souvent place a l'emportement d'un ennemi." It is, however,
full of life, and amusing as an expression of honest hatred. The reader
when reading it will of course remember that Roman manners allowed a
mode of expression among the upper classes which is altogether denied to
those among us who hope to be regarded as gentlemen.
The games in Pompey's theatre, to the preparation of which Cicero
alludes in his speech against Piso, are described by him with his usual
vivacity and humor in a letter written immediately after them to his
friend Marius. Pompey's games, with which he celebrated his second
Consulship, seem to have been divided between the magnificent theatre
which he had just built--fragments of which still remain to us--and the
"circus maximus." This letter from Cicero is very interesting, as
showing the estimation in which these games were held, or were supposed
to be held, by a Roman man of letters, and as giving us some description
of what was done on the occasion. Marius had not come to Rome to see
them, and Cicero writes as though his friend had despised them. Cicero
himself, having been in Rome, had of course witnessed them. To have been
in Rome and not to have seen them would have been quite out of the
question. Not to come to Rome from a distance was an eccentricity. He
congratulated Marius for not having come, whether it was that he was
ill, or that the whole thing was too despicable: "You in the early
morning have been looking out upon your view over the bay while we have
been staring at puppets half asleep. Most costly games, but I should
say--judging of you by myself--that they would have been quite revolting
to you. Poor AEsopus was there acting, but so unfitted by age that all
his friends could not but wish that he had desisted. Why should I tell
you of it all? The very costliness of the affair took away all the
pleasure. Six hundred mules on the stage in the acting of Clytemnestra,
or three thousand golden goblets in The Trojan Horse--what delight could
they give you? If your slave Protogenes was reading to you something--so
that it were not one of my speeches--you were better off at any rate
than we. There were two marvellous slaughterings of beasts which lasted
for five days. Nobody denies but that they were very grand. But what
pleasure can there be to a man of letters[33] when some weak human
creature is destroyed by a sturdy beast, or when some lonely animal is
pierced through by a hunting-spear. The last day was the day of
elephants, in which there could be no delight except to the vulgar
crowd. You could not but pity them, feeling that the poor brutes had
something in common with humanity." In these combats were killed twenty
elephants and two hundred lions. The bad taste and systematical
corruption of Rome had reached its acme when this theatre was opened and
these games displayed by Pompey.
He tells Atticus,[34] in a letter written about this time, that he is
obliged to write to him by the hand of a secretary; from which we gather
that such had not been, at any rate, his practice. He is every day in
the Forum, making speeches; and he had already composed the dialogues De
Oratore, and had sent them to Lentulus. Though he was no longer in
office, his time seems to have been as fully occupied as when he was
Praetor or Consul.
We have records of at least a dozen speeches, made B.C. 55 and B.C. 54,
between that against Piso and the next that is extant, which was
delivered in defence of Plancius. He defended Cispius, but Cispius was
convicted. He defended Caninius Gallus, of whom we may presume that he
was condemned and exiled, because Cicero found him at Athens on his way
to Cilicia, Athens being the place to which exiled Roman oligarchs
generally betook themselves.[35] In this letter to his young friend
Caelius he speaks of the pleasure he had in meeting with Caninius at
Athens; but in the letter to Marius which I have quoted he complains of
the necessity which has befallen him of defending the man. The heat of
the summer of this year he passed in the country, but on his return to
the city in November he found Crassus defending his old enemy Gabinius.
Gabinius had crept back from his province into the city, and had been
received with universal scorn and a shower of accusations. Cicero at
first neither accused nor defended him, but, having been called on as a
witness, seems to have been unable to refrain from something of the
severity with which he had treated Piso. There was at any rate a passage
of arms in which Gabinius called him a banished criminal.[36] The Senate
then rose as one body to do honor to their late exile. He was, however,
afterward driven by the expostulations of Pompey to defend the man. At
his first trial Gabinius was acquitted, but was convicted and banished
when Cicero defended him. Cicero suffered very greatly in the constraint
thus put upon him by Pompey, and refused Pompey till Caesar's request was
added. We can imagine that nothing was more bitter to him than the
obligation thus forced upon him. We have nothing of the speech left, but
can hardly believe that it was eloquent. From this, however, there rose
a reconciliation between Crassus and Cicero, both Caesar and Pompey
having found it to their interest to interfere. As a result of this,
early in the next year Cicero defended Crassus in the Senate, when an
attempt was made to rob the late Consul of his coveted mission to Syria.
Of what he did in this respect he boasts in a letter to Crassus,[37]
which, regarded from our point of view, would no doubt be looked upon as
base. He despised Crassus, and here takes credit for all the fine things
he had said of him; but we have no right to think that Cicero could have
been altogether unlike a Roman. He speaks also in the Senate on behalf
of the people of Tenedos, who had brought their immunities and
privileges into question by some supposed want of faith. All we know of
this speech is that it was spoken in vain. He pleaded against an Asiatic
king, Antiochus of Comagene, who was befriended by Pompey, but Cicero
seems to have laughed him out of some of his petty possessions.[38] He
spoke for the inhabitants of Reate on some question of water-privilege
against the Interamnates. Interamna we now know as Terne, where a modern
Pope made a lovely water-fall, and at the same time rectified the
water-privileges of the surrounding district. Cicero went down to its
pleasant Tempe, as he calls it, and stayed there awhile with one
Axius.[39] He returned thence to Rome to undertake some case for
Fonteius, and attended the games which Milo was giving, Milo having been
elected AEdile. Here we have a morsel of dramatic criticism on Antiphon
the actor and Arbuscula the actress, which reminds one of Pepys. Then he
defended Messius, then Drusus, then Scaurus. He mentions all these cases
in the same letter, but so slightly that we cannot trouble ourselves
with their details. We only feel that he was kept as busy as a London
barrister in full practice. He also defended Vatinius--that Vatinius
with whose iniquities he had been so indignant at the trial of Sextius.
He defended him twice at the instigation of Caesar; and he does not seem
to have suffered in doing so, as he had certainly done when called upon
to stand up and plead for his late consular enemy, Gabinius. Valerius
Maximus, a dull author, often quoted but seldom read, whose task it was
to give instances of all the virtues and vices produced by mankind,
refers to these pleadings for Gabinius and Vatinius as instances of an
almost divine forgiveness of injury.[40] I think we must seek for the
good, if good is to be discovered in the proceeding, in the presumed
strength which might be added to the Republic by friendly relations
between himself and Caesar.
[Sidenote: B.C. 54, aetat. 53.]
In the spring of the year we find Cicero writing to Caesar in apparently
great intimacy. He recommends to Caesar his young friend Trebatius, a
lawyer, who was going to Gaul in search of his fortune, and in doing so
he refers to a joking promise from Caesar that he would make another
friend, whom he had recommended, King of Gaul; or, if not that, foreman
at least to Lepta, his head of the mechanics. Lepta was an officer in
trust under Caesar, with whose name we become familiar in Cicero's
correspondence, though I do not remember that Caesar ever mentions him.
"Send me some one else that I may show my friendship," Caesar had said,
knowing well that Cicero was worth any price of the kind. Cicero
declares to Caesar that on hearing this he held up his hands in grateful
surprise, and on this account he had sent Trebatius. "Mi Caesar," he
says, writing with all affection; and then he praises Trebatius,
assuring Caesar that he does not recommend the young man loosely, as he
had some other young men who were worthless--such as Milo, for instance.
This results in much good done to Trebatius, though the young man at
first does not like the service with the army. He is a lawyer, and finds
the work in Gaul very rough. Cicero, who is anxious on his behalf,
laughs at him and bids him take the good things that come in his way. In
subsequent years Trebatius was made known to the world as the legal
pundit whom Horace pretends to consult as to the libellous nature of his
satires.[41]
In September of this year Cicero pleaded in court for his friend Cn.
Plancius, against whom there was brought an accusation that, in
canvassing and obtaining the office of AEdile, he had been guilty of
bribery. In all these accusations, which come before us as having been
either promoted or opposed by Cicero, there is not one in which the
reader sympathizes more strongly with the person accused than in this.
Plancius had shown Cicero during his banishment the affection of a
brother, or almost of a son. Plancius had taken him in and provided for
him in Macedonia, when to do so was illegal. Cicero now took great
delight in returning the favor. The reader of this oration cannot learn
from it that Plancius had in truth done anything illegal. The complaint
really made against him was that he, filling the comparatively humble
position of a knight, had ventured to become the opposing candidate of
such a gallant young aristocrat as M. Juventius Laterensis, who was
beaten at this election, and now brought this action in revenge. There
is no tearing of any enemy to tatters in this oration, but there is much
pathos, and, as was usual with Cicero at this period of his life, an
inordinate amount of self-praise. There are many details as to the way
in which the tribes voted at elections, which the patient and curious
student will find instructive, but which will probably be caviare to all
who are not patient and curious students. There are a few passages of
peculiar force. Addressing himself to the rival of Plancius, he tells
Laterensis that, even though the people might have judged badly in
selecting Plancius, it was not the less his duty to accept the judgment
of the people.[42] Say that the people ought not to have done so; but it
should have been sufficient for him that they had done so. Then he
laughs with a beautiful irony at the pretensions of the accuser. "Let us
suppose that it was so," he says.[43] "Let no one whose family has not
soared above praetorian honors contest any place with one of consular
family. Let no mere knight stand against one with praetorian relations."
In such a case there would be no need of the people to vote at all.
Farther on he gives his own views as to the honors of the State in
language that is very grand. "It has," he says, "been my first endeavor
to deserve the high rank of the State; my second, to have been thought
to deserve it. The rank itself has been but the third object of my
desires."[44] Plancius was acquitted--it seems to us quite as a matter
of course.
In this perhaps the most difficult period of his existence, when the
organized conspiracy of the day had not as yet overturned the landmarks
of the constitution, he wrote a long letter to his friend Lentulus,[45]
him who had been prominent as Consul in rescuing him from his exile, and
who was now Proconsul in Cilicia. Lentulus had probably taxed him, after
some friendly fashion, with going over from the "optimates" or
Senatorial party to that of the conspirators Pompey, Caesar, and Crassus.
He had been called a deserter for having passed in his earlier years
from the popular party to that of the Senate, and now the leading
optimates were doubtful of him--whether he was not showing himself too
well inclined to do the bidding of the democratic leaders. The one
accusation has been as unfair as the other. In this letter he reminds
Lentulus that a captain in making a port cannot always sail thither in a
straight line, but must tack and haul and use a slant of wind as he can
get it. Cicero was always struggling to make way against a head-wind,
and was running hither and thither in his attempt, in a manner most
perplexing to those who were looking on without knowing the nature of
the winds; but his port was always there, clearly visible to him, if he
could only reach it. That port was the Old Republic, with its well-worn
and once successful institutions. It was not to be "fetched." The winds
had become too perverse, and the entrance had become choked with sand.
But he did his best to fetch it; and, though he was driven hither and
thither in his endeavors, it should be remembered that to lookers-on
such must ever be the appearance of those who are forced to tack about
in search of their port.
I have before me Mr. Forsyth's elaborate and very accurate account of
this letter. "Now, however," says the biographer, "the future lay dark
before him; and not the most sagacious politician at Rome could have
divined the series of events--blundering weakness on the one side and
unscrupulous ambition on the other--which led to the Dictatorship of
Caesar and the overthrow of the constitution." Nothing can be more true.
Cicero was probably the most sagacious politician in Rome; and he,
though he did understand much of the weakness--and, it should be added,
of the greed--of his own party, did not foresee the point which Caesar
was destined to reach, and which was now probably fixed before Caesar's
own eyes. But I cannot agree with Mr. Forsyth in the result at which he
had arrived when he quoted a passage from one of the notes affixed by
Melmoth to his translation of this letter: "It was fear alone that
determined his resolution; and having once already suffered in the cause
of liberty, he did not find himself to be disposed to be twice its
martyr." I should not have thought these words worthy of refutation had
they not been backed by Mr. Forsyth. How did Cicero show his fear? Had
he feared--as indeed there was cause enough, when it was difficult for a
leading man to keep his throat uncut amid the violence of the times, or
a house over his head--might he not have made himself safe by accepting
Caesar's offers? A Proconsul out of Rome was safe enough, but he would
not be a Proconsul out of Rome till he could avoid it no longer. When
the day of danger came, he joined Pompey's army against Caesar, doubting,
not for his life but for his character, as to what might be the best for
the Republic. He did not fear when Caesar was dead and only Antony
remained. When the hour came in which his throat had to be cut, he did
not fear. When a man has shown such a power of action in the face of
danger as Cicero displayed at forty-four in his Consulship, and again
at sixty-four in his prolonged struggle with Antony, it is contrary to
nature that he should have been a coward at fifty-four.
And all the evidence of the period is opposed to this theory of
cowardice. There was nothing special for him to fear when Caesar was in
Gaul, and Crassus about to start for Syria, and Pompey for his
provinces. Such was the condition of Rome, social and political, that
all was uncertain and all was dangerous. But men had become used to
danger, and were anxious only, in the general scramble, to get what
plunder might be going. Unlimited plunder was at Cicero's
command--provinces, magistracies, abnormal lieutenancies--but he took
nothing. He even told his friend in joke that he would have liked to be
an augur, and the critics have thereupon concluded that he was ready to
sell his country for a trifle. But he took nothing when all others were
helping themselves.
The letter to Lentulus is well worth studying, if only as evidence of
the thoughtfulness with which he weighed every point affecting his own
character. He did wish to stand well with the "optimates," of whom
Lentulus was one. He did wish to stand well with Caesar, and with Pompey,
who at this time was Caesar's jackal. He did find the difficulty of
running with the hare and hunting with the hounds. He must have surely
learned at last to hate all compromise. But he had fallen on hard times,
and the task before him was impossible. If, however, his hands were
clean when those of others were dirty, and his motives patriotic while
those of others were selfish, so much ought to be said for him.
In the same year he defended Rabirius Postumus, and in doing so carried
on the purpose which he had been instigated to undertake by Caesar in
defending Gabinius. This Rabirius was the nephew of him whom ten years
before Cicero had defended when accused of having killed Saturninus. He
was a knight, and, as was customary with the Equites, had long been
engaged in the pursuit of trade, making money by lending money, and
such like. He had, it seems, been a successful man, but, in an evil time
for himself, had come across King Ptolemy Auletes when there was a
question of restoring that wretched sovereign to the throne of Egypt. As
Cicero was not himself much exercised in this matter, I have not
referred to the king and his affairs, wishing as far as possible to
avoid questions which concern the history of Rome rather than the life
of Cicero; but the affairs of this banished king continually come up in
the records of this time. Pompey had befriended Auletes, and Gabinius,
when Proconsul in Syria, had succeeded in restoring the king to his
throne--no doubt in obedience to Pompey, though not in obedience to the
Senate. Auletes, when in Rome, had required large sums of
money--suppliant kings when in the city needed money to buy venal
Senators--and Rabirius had supplied him. The profits to be made from
suppliant kings when in want of money were generally very great, but
this king seems so have got hold of all the money which Rabirius
possessed, so that the knight-banker found himself obliged to become one
of the king's suite when the king went back to take possession of his
kingdom. In no other way could he hang on to the vast debt that was
owing to him. In Egypt he found himself compelled to undergo various
indignities. He became no better than a head-servant among the king's
servants. One of the charges brought against him was that he, a Roman
knight, had allowed himself to be clothed in the half-feminine garb of
an Oriental attendant upon a king. It was also brought against him as
part of the accusation that he had bribed, or had endeavored to bribe, a
certain Senator. The crime nominally laid to the charge of Rabirius was
"de repetundis"--for extorting money in the position of a magistrate.
The money alluded to had been, in truth, extorted by Gabinius from
Ptolemy Auletes as the price paid for his restoration, and had come in
great part probably from out of the pocket of Rabirius himself. Gabinius
had been condemned, and ordered to repay the money. He had none to
repay, and the claim, by some clause in the law to that effect was
transferred to Rabirius as his agent. Rabirius was accused as though he
had extorted the money--which he had in fact lost, but the spirit of the
accusation lay in the idea that he, a Roman knight, had basely subjected
himself to an Egyptian king. That Rabirius had been base and sordid
there can be no doubt. That he was ruined by his transaction with
Auletes is equally certain. It is supposed that he was convicted. He was
afterward employed by Caesar, who, when in power, may have recalled him
from banishment. There are many passages in the oration to which I would
fain refer the reader had I space to do so. I will name only one in
which Cicero endeavors to ingratiate himself with his audience by
referring to the old established Roman hatred of kings: "Who is there
among us who, though he may not have tried them himself, does not know
the ways of kings? 'Listen to me here!' 'Obey my word at once!' 'Speak a
word more than you are told, and you'll see what you'll get!' 'Do that a
second time, and you die!' We should read of such things and look at
them from a distance, not only for our pleasure, but that we may know of
what we have to be aware, and what we ought to avoid."[46]
There is a letter written in this year to Curio, another young friend
such as Caelius, of whom I have spoken. Curio also was clever,
dissipated, extravagant, and unscrupulous. But at this period of his
life he was attached to Cicero, who was not indifferent to the services
which might accrue to him from friends who might be violent and
unscrupulous on the right side.
[Sidenote: B.C. 53, aetat. 54.]
This letter was written to secure Curio's services for another friend
not quite so young, but equally attached, and perhaps of all the Romans
of the time the most unscrupulous and the most violent. This friend was
Milo, who was about to stand for the Consulship of the following year.
Curio was on his road from Asia Minor, where he had been Quaestor, and is
invited by Cicero in language peculiarly pressing to be the leader of
Milo's party on the occasion.[47] We cannot but imagine that the winds
which Curio was called upon to govern were the tornadoes and squalls
which were to be made to rage in the streets of Rome to the great
discomfiture of Milo's enemies during his canvass. To such a state had
Rome come, that for the first six months of this year there were no
Consuls, an election being found to be impossible. Milo had been the
great opponent of Clodius in the city rows which had taken place
previous to the exile of Cicero. The two men are called by Mommsen the
Achilles and the Hector of the streets.[48] Cicero was of course on
Milo's side, as Milo was an enemy to Clodius. In this matter his feeling
was so strong that he declares to Curio that he does not think that the
welfare and fortunes of one man were ever so dear to another as now were
those of Milo to him. Milo's success is the only object of interest he
has in the world. This is interesting to us now as a prelude to the
great trial which was to take place in the next year, when Milo, instead
of being elected Consul, was convicted of murder.
In the two previous years Caesar had made two invasions into Britain, in
the latter of which Quintus Cicero had accompanied him. Cicero in
various letters alludes to this undertaking, but barely gives it the
importance which we, as Britons, think should have been attached to so
tremendous an enterprise. There might perhaps be some danger, he
thought, in crossing the seas, and encountering the rocky shores of the
island, but there was nothing to be got worth the getting. He tells
Atticus that he can hardly expect any slaves skilled either in music or
letters,[49] and he suggests to Trebatius that, as he will certainly
find neither gold nor slaves, he had better put himself into a British
chariot and come back in it as soon as possible.[50] In this year Caesar
reduced the remaining tribes of Gaul, and crossed the Rhine a second
time. It was his sixth year in Gaul, and men had learned to know what
was his nature. Cicero had discovered his greatness, as also Pompey must
have done, to his great dismay; and he had himself discovered what he
was himself; but two accidents occurred in this year which were perhaps
as important in Roman history as the continuance of Caesar's success.
Julia, Caesar's daughter and Pompey's wife, died in childbed. She seems
to have been loved by all, and had been idolized from the time of the
marriage by her uxorious husband, who was more than twenty-four years
her senior. She certainly had been a strong bond of union between Caesar
and Pompey; so much so that we are surprised that such a feeling should
have been so powerful among the Romans of the time. "Concordiae pignus,"
a "pledge of friendship," she is called by Paterculus, who tells us in
the same sentence that the Triumvirate had no other bond to hold it
together.[51] Whether the friendship might have remained valid had Julia
lived we cannot say; but she died, and the two friends became enemies.
From the moment of Julia's death there was no Triumvirate.
The other accident was equally fatal to the bond of union which had
bound the three men together. Late in the year, after his Consulship,
B.C. 54, Crassus had gone to his Syrian government with the double
intention of increasing his wealth and rivalling the military glories of
Caesar and Pompey. In the following year he became an easy victim to
Eastern deceit, and was destroyed by the Parthians, with his son and the
greater part of the Roman army which had been intrusted to him.[52] We
are told that Crassus at last destroyed himself. I doubt, however,
whether there was enough of patriotism alive among Romans at the time to
create the feeling which so great a loss and so great a shame should
have occasioned. As far as we can learn, the destruction of Crassus and
his legions did not occasion so much thought in Rome as the breaking up
of the Triumvirate.
Cicero's daughter Tullia was now a second time without a husband. She
was the widow of her first husband Piso; had then, B.C. 56, married
Crassipes, and had been divorced. Of him we have heard nothing, except
that he was divorced. A doubt has been thrown on the fact whether she
was in truth ever married to Crassipes. We learn from letters, both to
his brother and to Atticus, that Cicero was contented with the match,
when it was made, and did his best to give the lady a rich dowry.[53]
In this year Cicero was elected into the College of Augurs, to fill the
vacancy made by the death of young Crassus, who had been killed with his
father in Parthia. The reader will remember that he had in a joking
manner expressed a desire for the office. He now obtained it without any
difficulty, and certainly without any sacrifice of his principle. It had
formerly been the privilege of the augurs to fill up the vacancies in
their own college, but the right had been transferred to the people. It
was now conferred upon Cicero without serious opposition.