_CICERO'S MORAL ESSAYS._
We have now to deal with the moral essays of this almost inexhaustible
contributor to the world's literature, and we shall then have named
perhaps a quarter of all that he wrote. I have seen somewhere a
calculation that only a tenth of his works remain to us, dug out, as it
were, from the buried ruins of literature by the care of sedulous and
eager scholars. I make a more modest estimate of his powers. Judging
from what we know to have been lost, and from the absence of any effort
to keep the greater portion of his letters, I think that I do not
exaggerate his writing. Who can say but that as time goes on some future
Petrarch or some future Mai may discover writings hitherto unknown,
concealed in convent boxes, or more mysteriously hidden beneath the
labors of Middle-Age monks? It was but in 1822 that the De Republica was
brought to light--so much of it at least as we still possess; and for
more than thirty years afterward Cardinal Mai continued to reproduce,
from time to time, collections of Greek and Latin writings hitherto
unheard of by classical readers. Let us hope, however, that the zeal of
the learned may stop short of that displayed by Simon Du Bos, or we may
have whole treatises of Cicero of which he himself was guiltless.[306]
I can hardly content myself with classifying the De Republica and the De
Legibus under the same name with these essays of Cicero, which are
undoubtedly moral in their nature. But it may pass, perhaps, without
that distinct contradiction which had to be made as to the enveloping
the De Officiis in the garb of philosophy. It has been the combining of
the true and false in one set, and handing them down to the world as
Cicero's philosophy, which has done the mischief. The works reviewed in
the last chapter contained disputations on the Greek philosophy which
Cicero thought might be well handled in the Latin language for the
benefit of his countrymen. It would be well for them to know what
Epicurus taught, or Zeno, and how they differed from Socrates and Plato,
and this he told them. Now in these moral essays he gives them his own
philosophy--if that may be called philosophy which is intended to teach
men how to live well. There are six books on government, called the De
Republica, and three on law; and there are the three treatises on old
age and friendship, each in one book, and that on the duty of man to
man, in three.
There is a common error in the world as to the meaning of the word
republic. It has come to have a sweet savor in the nostrils of men, or a
most evil scent, according to their politics. But there is, in truth,
the Republic of Russia, as there is that of the United States, and that
of England. Cicero, in using it as the name of his work, simply means
"the government;" and the treatise under that head contains an account
of the Roman Empire, and is historical rather than argumentative and
scientific. He himself was an oligarch, and had been brought up amid a
condition of things in which that most deleterious form of government
recommended itself to him as containing all that had been good and
magnificent in the Roman Empire. The great men of Rome, whom the empire
had demanded for its construction, had come up each for the work of a
year; and, when succeeding, had perhaps been elected for a second. By
the expulsion of their kings, the class from whom these men had been
chosen showed their personal desire for honor, and the marvel is that
through so many centuries those oligarchs should have flourished. The
reader, unless he be strongly impregnated with democratic feelings, when
he begins to read Roman history finds himself wedded to the cause of
these oligarchs. They have done the big deeds, and the opposition comes
to them from vulgar hands. Let me ask any man who remembers the reading
of his Livy whether it was not so with him. But it was in truth the
democratic element opposed to these leaders, and the battles they won
from time to time within the walls of the city, which produced the
safety of Rome and enabled the government to go on. Then by degrees the
people became enervated and the leaders became corrupt, and by
masterhood over foreign people and external subjects slaves were
multiplied, and the work appertaining to every man could be done by
another man's hand. Then the evils of oligarchy began. Plunder, rapine,
and luxury took the place of duty performed. A Verres ruled where a
Marcellus had conquered. Cicero, who saw the difference plainly enough
in regard to the individuals, did not perceive that this evil had grown
according to its nature. That state of affairs was produced which
Mommsen has described to us as having been without remedy. But Cicero
did not see it. He had his eyes on the greatness of the past--and on
himself--and would not awake to the fact that the glory was gone from
Rome. He was in this state of mind when he wrote his De Republica, nine
years before the time in which he commenced his philosophical
discussions. Then he still hoped. Caesar was away in Gaul, and Pompey
maintained at Rome the ghost of the old Republic. He could still open
his mouth and talk boldly of freedom. He had not been as yet driven to
find consolation amid that play of words which constitutes the Greek
philosophy.
I must remind the readers again that the De Republica is a fragment: the
first part is wanting. We find him telling us the story of the elder
Cato, in order that we may understand how good it is that we should not
relax in our public work as long as our health will sustain us. Then he
gives instances to show that the truly good citizen will not be deterred
by the example of men who have suffered for their country, and among the
number he names himself. But he soon introduces the form of dialogue
which he afterward continues, and brings especially the younger Scipio
and Laelius upon the scene. The lessons which are given to us are
supposed to come from the virtue of the titular grandson of the greater
Scipio who out-manoeuvred Hannibal. He continues to tell story after
story out of the Roman chronicles, and at last assures us that that form
of government is the best in which the monarchical element is tempered
by the authority of the leading citizens, and kept alive by the voices
of the people. Is it only because I am an Englishman that he seems to me
to describe that form of government which was to come in England?
The second book also begins with the praises of Cato. Scipio then
commences with Romulus, and tells the history of Rome's kings. Tarquin
is banished, and the Consulate established. He tells us, by no means
with approbation, how the Tribunate was established, and then, alas!
there comes a break in the MS.
In the third we have, as a beginning, a fragment handed down to us by
Augustine, in which Cicero complains of the injustice of Nature in
having sent man into the world, as might a step-mother, naked, weak,
infirm, with soul anxious, timid, and without force, but still having
within it something of divine fire not wholly destroyed. Then, after a
while, through many "lacunae," Scipio, Laelius, and one Philus fall into a
discourse as to justice. There is a remarkable passage, from which we
learn that the Romans practised protection with a rigor exceeding that
of modern nations. They would not even permit their transalpine allies
to plant their olives and vineyards, lest their produce should make
their way across Italy--whereby they raised the prices against
themselves terribly of oil and wine.[307] "There is a kind of slavery
which is unjust," says one, "when those men have to serve others who
might 'properly belong to themselves.' But when they only are made to be
slaves who--" We may perceive that the speaker went on to say that they
who were born slaves might properly be kept in that position. But it is
evidently intended to be understood that there exists a class who are
slaves by right. Carneades, the later master of the new Academy, has now
joined them, and teaches a doctrine which would not make him popular in
this country. "If you should know," he says, "that an adder lay hid just
where one were about to sit down whose death would be a benefit to you,
you would do wrong unless you were to tell him of it. But you would do
it with impunity, as no one could prove that you knew it." From this may
be seen the nature of the discourses on justice.
The next two books are but broken fragments, treating of morals and
manners. In the sixth we come to that dream of Scipio which has become
so famous in the world of literature that I do not know whether I can do
better than translate it, and add it on as an appendix to the end of my
volume. It is in itself so beautiful in parts that I think that all
readers will thank me. (See appendix to this chapter). At the same time
it has to be admitted that it is in parts fantastic, and might almost be
called childish, were it not that we remember, when reading it, at what
distance of time it was written, and with what difficulty Cicero strove
to master subjects which science has made familiar to us. The music of
the spheres must have been heard in his imagination before he could have
told us of it, as he has done in language which seems to be poetic now
as it was then--and because poetic, therefore not absurd. The length of
the year's period is an extravagance. You may call your space of time by
what name you will; it is long or short in proportion to man's life. He
tells us that we may not hope that our fame shall be heard of on the
other side of the Ganges, or that our voices shall come down through
many years. I myself read this dream of Scipio in a volume found in
Australia, and read it two thousand years after it was written. He could
judge of this world's future only by the past. But when he tells us of
the soul's immortality, and of the heaven to be won by a life of virtue,
of the duty upon us to remain here where God has placed us, and of the
insufficiency of fame to fill the cravings of the human heart, then we
have to own that we have come very near to that divine teaching which he
was not permitted to hear.
Two years afterward, about the time that Milo was killing Clodius, he
wrote his treatise in three books, De Legibus. It is, we are told, a
copy from Plato. As is the Topica a copy from Aristotle, written on
board ship from memory, so may this be called a copy. The idea was given
to him, and many of the thoughts which he has worked up in his own
manner. It is a dialogue between him and Atticus and his brother
Quintus, and treats rather of the nature and origin of law, and how law
should be made to prevail, than of laws as they had been as yet
constructed for the governance of man. All that is said in the first
book may be found scattered through his philosophic treatises. There are
some pretty morsels, as when Atticus tells us that he will for the nonce
allow Cicero's arguments to pass, because the music of the birds and the
waters will prevent his fellow-Epicureans from hearing and being led
away by mistaken doctrine.[308] Now and again he enunciates a great
doctrine, as when he declares that "there is nothing better than that
men should understand that they are born to be just, and that justice is
not a matter of opinion, but is inherent in nature."[309] He constantly
opposes the idea of pleasure, recurring to the doctrine of his Greek
philosophy. It was not by them, however, that he had learned to feel
that a man's final duty here on earth is his duty to other men.
In the second book he inculcates the observance of religious ceremonies
in direct opposition to that which he afterward tells us in his treatise
De Divinatione. But in this, De Legibus, we may presume that he intends
to give instructions for the guidance of the public, whereas in the
other he is communicating to a few chosen friends those esoteric
doctrines which it would be dangerous to give to the world at large.
There is a charming passage, in which we are told not to devote the rich
things of the earth to the gods. Gold and silver will create impure
desire. Ivory, taken from the body of an animal, is a gift not simple
enough for a god. Metals, such as iron, are for war rather than for
worship. An image, if it is to be used, let it be made of one bit of
wood, or one block of stone. If cloth is given, let it not be more than
a woman can make in a month. Let there be no bright colors. White is
best for the gods; and so on.[310] Here we have the wisdom of Plato, or
of those from whom Plato had borrowed it, teaching us a lesson against
which subsequent ages have rebelled. It is not only that a god cannot
want our gold and silver, but that a man does want them. That rule as to
the woman's morsel of cloth was given in some old assembly, lest her
husband or her brother should lose the advantage of her labor. It was
seen what superstition would do in collecting the wealth of the world
round the shrines of the gods. How many a man has since learned to
regret the lost labor of his household; and yet what god has been the
better? There may be a question of aesthetics, indeed, with which Cicero
does not meddle.
In the third book he descends to practical and at the same time
political questions. There had been no matter contested so vehemently
among Romans as that of the establishment and maintenance of the
Tribunate. Cicero defends its utility, giving, with considerable wit,
the task of attacking it to his brother Quintus. Quintus, indeed, is
very violent in his onslaught. What can be more "pestiferous," or more
prone to sedition? Then Cicero puts him down. "O Quintus," he says, "you
see clearly the vices of the Tribunate! but can there be anything more
unjust than, in discussing a matter, to remember all its evils and to
forget all its merits? You might say the same of the Consuls; for the
very possession of power is an evil in itself. But without that evil you
cannot have the good which the institution contains. The power of the
Tribunes is too great, you say. Who denies it? But the violence of the
people, always cruel and immodest, is less so under their own leader
than if no leader had been given them. The leader will measure his
danger; but the people itself know no such measurement."[311] He
afterward takes up the question of the ballot, and is against it on
principle. "Let the people vote as they will," he says, "but let their
votes be known to their betters."[312] It is, alas, useless now to
discuss the matter here in England! We have been so impetuous in our
wish to avoid the evil of bribery--which was quickly going--that we
have rushed into that of dissimulation, which can only be made to go by
revolutionary changes. When men vote by tens of thousands the ballot
will be safe, but no man will then care for the ballot. It is, however,
strange to see how familiar men were under the Roman Empire with matters
which are perplexing us to-day.
We now come to the three purely moral essays, the last written of his
works, except the Philippics and certain of his letters, and the Topica.
Indeed, when you reach the last year or two of his life, it becomes
difficult to assign their exact places to each. He mentions one as
written, and then another; but at last this latter appears before the
former. They were all composed in the same year, the year before his
death--the most active year of his life, as far as his written works are
concerned--and I shall here treat De Senectute first, then De Amicitia,
and the De Officiis last, believing them to have been published in that
order.
The De Senectute is an essay written in defence of old age, generally
called Cato Major. It is supposed to have been spoken by the old Censor,
149 B.C., and to have been listened to by Scipio and Laelius. This was
the same Scipio who had the dream--who, in truth, was not a Scipio at
all, but a son of Paulus AEmilius, whom we remember in history as the
younger Africanus. Cato rushes at once into his subject, and proves to
us his point by insisting on all those commonplace arguments which were
probably as well known before his time as they have been since. All men
wish for old age, but none rejoice when it has come. The answer is that
no man really wishes for old age, but simply wishes for a long life, of
which old age is the necessary ending. It creeps on us so quickly! But
in truth it does not creep quicker on youth than does youth on infancy;
but the years seem to fly fast because not marked by distinct changes.
It is the part of a wise man to see that each portion of his five-act
poem shall be well performed. Cato goes on with his lesson, and tells us
perhaps all that could be said on behalf of old age at that period of
the world's history. It was written by an old man to an old man; for it
is addressed to Atticus, who was now sixty-seven, and of course deals
much in commonplaces. But it is full of noble thoughts, and is pleasant,
and told in the easiest language; and it leaves upon the reader a sweet
savor of the dignity of age. Let the old man feel that it is not for him
to attempt the pranks of youth, and he will already have saved himself
from much of the evil which Time can do to him. I am ready for you, and
you cannot hurt me. "Let not the old man assume the strength of the
young, as a young man does not that of the bull or the elephant. * * *
But still there is something to be regretted by an orator, for to talk
well requires not only intellect but all the powers of the body. The
melodious voice, however, remains, which--and you see my years--I have
not yet lost. The voice of an old man should always be tranquil and
contained."[313] He tells a story of Massinissa, who was then supposed
to be ninety. He was stiff in his joints, and therefore when he went a
journey had himself put upon a horse, and never left it, or started on
foot and never mounted.[314] "We must resist old age, my Laelius. We must
compensate our shortness by our diligence, my Scipio. As we fight
against disease, so let us contend with old age.[315] * * * Why age
should be avaricious I could never tell. Can there be anything more
absurd than to demand so great a preparation for so small a
journey?"[316] He tells them that he knew their fathers, and that "he
believes they are still alive--that, though they have gone from this
earth, they are still leading that life which can only be considered
worthy of the name."[317]
The De Amicitia is called Laelius. It is put into the mouth of Laelius,
and is supposed to be a discourse on friendship held by him in the
presence of his two sons-in-law, Caius Fannius and Mucius Scaevola, a few
days after the death of Scipio his friend. Not Damon and Pythias were
more renowned for their friendship than Scipio and Laelius. He discusses
what is friendship, and why it is contracted; among whom friendship
should exist; what should be its laws and duties; and, lastly, by what
means it should be preserved.
Cicero begins by telling the story of his own youth; how he had been
placed under the charge of Scaevola the augur, and how, having changed
his toga, he never left the old man's side till he died; and he recalls
how once, sitting with him in a circle with friends, Scaevola fell into
that mode of conversation which was usual with him, and told him how
once Laelius had discoursed to them on friendship. It is from first to
last fresh and green and cooling, as is the freshness of the early
summer grass to men who live in cities. The reader feels, as he goes on
with it, that he who had such thoughts and aspirations could never have
been altogether unhappy. Coming at the end of his life, in the telling
the stories of which we have had to depend so much on his letters to
Atticus, it reminds me of the love that existed between them. He has
sometimes been querulous with his Atticus. He has complained of bad
advice, of deficient care, of halting friendship--in reading which
accusations we have, all of us, declared him to be wrong. But Atticus
understood him. He knew that the privileges and the burden must go
together, and told himself how much more than sufficient were the
privileges to compensate the burden. When we make our histories on the
bases of such loving letters, we should surely open them with careful
hands, and deal with them in sympathy with their spirit. In writing this
treatise De Amicitia especially for the eyes of Atticus, how constantly
the heart must have gone back to all that had passed between them--how
confident he must have been of the truth of his friend! He who, after
nearly half a century of friendship, could thus write to his friend on
friendship cannot have been an unhappy man.
"Should a new friendship spring up," he tells us, "let it not be
repressed. You shall still gather fruit from young trees; but do not let
it take the place of the old. Age and custom will have given the old
fruit a flavor of its own. Who is there that would ride a new horse in
preference to one tried--one who knows your hand?"[318]
I regard the De Officiis as one of the most perfect treatises on morals
which the world possesses, whether for the truth of the lessons given,
for their universality, or for the beauty and lightness of the language.
It is on a subject generally heavy, but is treated with so much art and
grace as to make it a delight to have read it, and an important part of
education to know it. It is addressed to his son, and is as good now as
when it was written. There is not a precept taught in it which is not
modern as well as ancient, and which is not fit alike for Christians and
Pagans. A system of morality, we might have said, should be one which
would suit all men alike. We are bound to acknowledge that this will
suit only gentlemen, because he who shall live in accordance with it
must be worthy of that name. The "honestum" means much more in Latin
than it does in English. Neither "honor" nor "honesty" will give the
rendering--not that honor or that honesty which we know. Modern honor
flies so high that it leaves honesty sometimes too nearly out of sight;
while honesty, though a sterling virtue, ignores those sentiments on
which honor is based. "Honestum" includes it all; and Cicero has raised
his lessons to such a standard as to comprise it all. But he so teaches
that listeners delight to hear. He never preaches. He does not fulminate
his doctrine at you, bidding you beware of backslidings and of
punishments; but he leads you with him along the grassy path, till you
seem to have found out for yourself what is good--you and he together,
and together to have learned that which is manly, graceful, honest, and
decorous.
In Cicero's essays is to be found always a perfect withdrawal of himself
from the circumstances of the world around him; so that the reader shall
be made to suppose that, in the evening of his life, having reached at
last, by means of work done for the State, a time of blessed rest, he
gives forth the wisdom of his age, surrounded by all that a tranquil
world can bestow upon him. Look back through the treatises written
during the last two years, and each shall appear to have been prepared
in some quiet and undisturbed period of his life; but we know that the
last polish given by his own hands to these three books De Officiis was
added amid the heat and turmoils of the Philippics. It is so singular,
this power of adapting his mind to whatever pursuit he will, that we are
taught almost to think that there must have been two Ciceros, and that
the one was eager in personal conflict with Antony, while the other was
seated in the garden of some Italian villa meditating words by obeying
which all men might be ennobled.
In the dialectical disputations of the Greek philosophers he had picked
up a mode of dividing his subject into numbers which is hardly fitted
for a discourse so free and open as is this. We are therefore somewhat
offended when we are told that virtue is generally divided "into three
headings."[319] If it be so, and if it be necessary that we should know
it, it should, I think, be conveyed to us without this attempt at
logical completeness. It is impossible to call this a fault. Accuracy
must, indeed, be in all writers a virtue. But feeling myself to be
occasionally wounded by this numbering, I mention it. In the De Officiis
he divides the entire matter into three parts, and to each part he
devotes a book. In the first he considers whether a thing is fit to be
done or left undone--that is, whether it be "honestum" or "turpe;" in
the second, whether it be expedient, that is "utile," or the reverse;
and in the third he compares the "honestum" and the "utile," and tells
us what to choose and what to avoid.
The duty due by a citizen to his country takes with him a place somewhat
higher than we accord to it. "Parents are dear, children are dear to us,
so are relations and friends; but our country embraces it all, for what
good man would not die so that he might serve it? How detestable, then,
is the barbarity of those who wound their country at every turn, and
have been and are occupied in its destruction."[320] He gives us some
excellent advice as to our games, which might be read with
advantage, perhaps, by those who row in our university races. But at the
end of it he tells us that the hunting-field affords an honest and
fitting recreation.[321] I have said that he was modern in his
views--but not altogether modern. He defends the suicide of Cato. "To
them," he says, speaking of Cato's companions in Africa, "it might not
have been forgiven. Their life was softer and their manners easier. But
to Cato nature had given an invincible gravity of manners which he had
strengthened with all the severity of his will. He had always remained
steadfast in the purpose that he would never stand face to face with the
tyrant of his country."[322] There was something terribly grand in
Cato's character, which loses nothing in coming to us from the lips of
Cicero. So much Cicero allows to the stern nature of the man's
character. Let us look back and we shall find that we make the same
allowance. This is not, in truth, a lesson which he gives us, but an
apology which he makes.
Read his advice given in the following line for the outward demeanor of
a gentleman: "There are two kinds of beauty. The one is loveliness,
which is a woman's gift. But dignity belongs to the man. Let all
ornament be removed from the person not worthy of a man to wear--and all
fault in gesture and in motion which is like to it. The manners of the
wrestling-ground and of the stage are sometimes odious; but let us see
the actor or the wrestler walking simple and upright, and we praise him.
Let him use a befitting neatness, not verging toward the effeminate, but
just avoiding a rustic harshness. The same measure is to be taken with
your clothes as with other matters in which a middle course is
best."[323]
Then he tells his son what pursuits are to be regarded as sordid. "Those
sources of gain are to be regarded as mean in the pursuit of which men
are apt to be offended, as are the business of tax-gathers and usurers.
All those are to be regarded as illiberal to which men bring their work
but not their art." As for instance, the painter of a picture shall be
held to follow a liberal occupation--but not so the picture dealer.
"They are sordid who buy from merchants that they may sell again: they
have to lie like the mischief or they cannot make their living. All mere
workmen are engaged in ignoble employment: what of grandeur can the mere
workshop produce? Least of all can those trades be said to be good
which administer only to our pleasures--such as fish-mongers, butchers,
cooks, and poulterers."[324] He adds at the end of his list that of all
employment none is better than agriculture, or more worthy of the care
of a freeman. In all of this it is necessary that we should receive what
he says with some little allowance for the difference in time; but there
is nothing, if we look closely into it, in which we cannot see the
source of noble ideas, and the reason for many notions which are now
departing from us--whether for good or evil who shall say?
In the beginning of the second book he apologizes for his love of
philosophy, as he calls it, saying that he knew how it had been misliked
among those round him. "But when the Republic," he says, "had ceased to
be--that Republic which had been all my care--my employment ceased both
in the Forum and the Senate. But when my mind absolutely refused to be
inactive, I thought that I might best live down the misery of the time
if I devoted myself to philosophy."[325] From this we may see how his
mind had worked when the old occupation of his life was gone. "Nihil
agere autem quum animus non posset!" How piteous was his position, and
yet how proud! There was nothing for him to do--but there was nothing
because hitherto there had been so much that he had always done.
He tells his son plainly how an honest man must live. To be ashamed of
nothing, he must do nothing of which he will be ashamed. But for him
there is this difficulty: "If any one on his entrance into the world has
had laid upon him the greatness of a name won by his father, let us
say--as, my Cicero, has perhaps happened to you--the eyes of all men
will be cast upon him, and inquiry will be made as to his mode of life.
He will be so placed under the meridian sun that no word spoken or deed
done by him shall be hidden.[326] * * * He must live up to the glory to
which he has been born." He gives to his son much advice about the bar.
"But the greatest praise," he says, "comes from defending a man accused;
and especially so when you shall assist one who is surrounded and
ill-treated by the power of some great man. This happened to me more
than once in my youth, when, for instance, I defended Roscius Amerinus
against Sulla's power." The speech is with us extant still.[327] He
tells us much as to the possession of money, and the means of insuring
it in a well-governed state. "Take care that you allow no debts to the
injury of the Republic. You must guard against this at all hazards--but
never by taking from the rich and giving it to the poor. Nothing is so
requisite to the State as public credit--which cannot exist unless
debtors be made to pay what they owe. There was nothing to which I
looked more carefully than this when I was Consul. Horse and foot, they
tried their best; but I opposed them, and freed the Republic from the
threatened evil. Never were debts more easily or more quickly collected.
When men knew that they could not ignore their creditors, then they
paid. But he who was then the conquered is the conqueror now. He has
effected what he contemplated--even though it be not now necessary for
him."[328] From this passage it seems that these books must have been
first written before Caesar's death. Caesar, at the time of Catiline's
conspiracy, had endeavored to annul all debts--that is, to establish
"new tables" according to the Roman idiom--but had failed by Cicero's
efforts. He had since affected it, although he might have held his power
without seeking for the assistance of such debtors. Who could that be
but Caesar? In the beginning of the third book there is another passage
declaring the same thing: "I have not strength enough for silent
solitude, and therefore give myself up to my pen. In the short time
since the Republic has been overturned I have written more than in all
my former years."[329] That, again, he could not have written after
Caesar had fallen. We are left, indeed, to judge, from the whole nature
of the discourse, that it was written at the period in which the wrongs
done by Caesar to Rome--wrongs at any rate as they appeared to
Cicero--were just culminating in that regal pride of action which led to
his slaughter. It was written then, but was published a few months
afterward.